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Right to read in peril

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Why you can trust SCMP

Every so often, Hong Kong organisations get a collective rush of blood to the head. Our usual sane and efficient system of administration then whirls wildly out of control.

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One of those periodic spurts of spring madness is exciting members of our official anti-pornography community.

When police statistics showed the numbers of indecent assaults was on the rise it raised fears among members of the Fight Crime Committee. The result was speedy legislation changing the Control of Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance.

There has since been frenzied activity by the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority and the Obscene Articles Tribunal. Police have been bestirred to raid bookshops seeking material which to normal people would seem innocuous, harmless or unreadable. Respectable bookshop operators have been reduced to near-terror.

The upshot booksellers have removed from their shelves reputable and valuable works for art or scholarship, fearful they may infringe the draconian laws which make innocence almost impossible to prove and which provide fines up to $1 million and jail terms of three years.

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Changes in the regulations classify books and magazines into three classes. The first is material that can be sold to everyone. The third is hard-core obscenity and pornography, which is banned.

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