In the South China Morning Post on December 5, you reported on the visit of a 'human rights expert' Frances D'Souza to Hong Kong.
Dr D'Souza thinks Article 23 might turn Hong Kong into a 'police state'. But compared with the Official Secrets Act, Prevention of Terrorism, Public Order Act and other legislation in her country of origin, Britain, Article 23 seems a relatively benign and reasonable proposal.
Anyone who was involved with alternative politics in the latter half of the 20th century in Britain will know that phones were tapped, demonstrators arrested, houses searched and suspects questioned, just for being against nuclear weapons or the presence of British troops in Northern Ireland, or for supporting striking miners.
Since 9/11 the situation is even worse and across the Atlantic even the words 'police state' do not do justice to the Bush administration's curtailment of (already limited) civil liberties. The CIA now even has the right to kill American citizens with connections to al-Qaeda.
Not that there is any reason for Hong Kong to be as repressive as either Britain or the US. But in the whole debate opponents imply Article 23 is something peculiarly sinister. What they are really objecting to is the recognition implicit in the proposal that China has sovereignty over Hong Kong and not Britain or America. 'Subversion', says Dr D'Souza, appears in no other jurisprudence.
The phrase a 'threat to national security' does and is used freely. Hong Kong people and those living here need to accept that they live in China.