Our people don't believe in throwing Molotov cocktails like their counterparts in Seoul. Legal experts were divided over whether the proposed changes would threaten the right of habeas corpus, a safeguard against arbitrary arrest and detention. Nor was there expert agreement over whether measures to prevent Hong Kong political parties from establishing foreign links could be enforced. Albert Chan, dean of the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, figures the impact on civil liberties would be minimal. The changes would simply restore colonial laws in force until the 1990s, Chan notes, and even those would probably be overturned by Hong Kong's courts.
Democratic legislators promise to file a battery of lawsuits challenging the proposed revisions.
They say they will also go to court over the legality of the Provisional Legislature that Beijing has formed to replace the existing, elected body on July 1. To avoid such questions about its legitimacy, the Provisional Legislature was obliged to conduct its first session last week across the border in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. Nor are the democrats likely to confine their protests to the courthouse. The democrats are not alone in their concern. By week's end, even Tung's allies in the business-based Liberal Party were vowing to oppose any attempts by the Provisional Legislature to revise current laws affecting human rights.