There is no need to impose Hong Kong’s Article 23 security law when the government and police have the ability to control the situation, former legislative council president Rita Fan has said. She was responding to questions about the Mong Kok unrest last Monday.
Fan, currently a local deputy of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, said that although the Chinese government characterised the protesters in the event as separatists, the probability of enacting the ill-fated Article 23 because of this is very small.
Fan also said that youths did not have self control and only wanted to express their anger.
“Even if you hate Leung Chun-ying, or if you want Leung Chun-ying to step down, you cannot do such things. Please use legal methods to criticise him and to request him to change,” she said.
She also told local media that the protesters in the Mong Kok unrest seemed “pretty well organised,” and “there were lorries coming into this Mong Kok area bringing with them all kinds of weapons or objects that can be used to attack. So it looks like it is not a simple thing that some young people went onto the Mong Kok street and started to have a clash with the police.”
“No matter if I am pro-Leung or anti-Leung, I have to side against the rioters,” she said.
Article 23 is a controversial security law within the Basic Law that, in part, allows the Hong Kong government to prohibit acts of subversion, sedition, secession, or treason against the central government. Its proposed enactment incited a mass demonstration on July 1, 2003.
In contrast to Fan’s views, pro-Beijing lawyer Junius Ho and scholar Lau Siu-kai called for the enactment of Article 23 after the Mong Kok events. According to Apple Daily, Junius Ho also said that it was acceptable for the police to shoot to kill since “it is not killing Hongkongers, but rioters.”
