Battle Is Brewing In Hong Kong Over Human Rights

Hong Kong entered its last 600 days under British rule Thursday in dispute with China, its future ruler, over proposals to trim the colony’s civil liberties.

The milestone to 1997 passed without fanfare. Shoppers thronged markets, the Stock Exchange was calm, and Gov. Chris Patten was discussing unemployment with legislators, labor leaders and businessmen.

But at the political level, a battle brewed over a China-appointed committee’s proposal to trim the Bill of Rights, an important human rights safeguard for Hong Kong’s 6 million people.

It is the latest in a succession of quarrels with China, mainly about Hong Kong’s freedoms, that have cast uncertainties over the transfer of sovereignty.

The committee’s proposals un-nerved Hong Kong because they would make the Bill of Rights subservient to the Basic Law, the constitution for Hong Kong following China’s assumption of control at midnight on July 1, 1997.

In its recommendations last month, the committee also said laws amended to comply with the Bill of Rights, which mainly affected freedom of speech, assembly and broadcasting, should be returned to their original, less liberal state.

Speaking Wednesday, Patten said the proposals had “set off alarm bells in Hong Kong which have echoed all round the world.”

They also cast a shadow over what should have been a symbol of the deepening ties between China and Hong Kong - the first official visit to Beijing by Attorney-General Jeremy Mathews.

Speaking as he departed Thursday, Mathews said he would use his meetings with Chinese officials to argue against trimming the Bill of Rights, which was enacted in 1991 to reassure the colony after China’s bloody crackdown on prodemocracy demonstrators in Beijing two years earlier.

The argument underscores the conflicting visions of Hong Kong’s future. China says its has already promised to uphold the colony’s Western-style freedoms, and it views the Bill of Rights and other new laws as late-in-the-day attempts to undermine its post-1997 hold on Hong Kong.

Chinese officials have defended the committee’s proposals as reasonable but the Chinese government has not yet endorsed them outright.

Anson Chan, Patten’s Chinese deputy, warned Wednesday that changing the Bill of Rights would be “very undesirable because it undermines confidence in Hong Kong’s legal system.”