LU Ping's reported promise not to repeal the Bill of Rights after 1997, but merely to seek to modify its legal status to keep it in line with the Basic Law, appears to mark a softening in the tone of Chinese attacks on Hong Kong's human rights code. It is a welcome step forward from the days when Chinese officials regularly threatened to ''take appropriate countermeasures'' after 1997, should the Bill be found to be incompatible with the Basic Law.
However, it is too early to celebrate. The change seems to be more of tone than of substance. The Director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office continues to claim the Bill will have to be modified to remove what John Kamm, the human rights lobbyist to whom he made his remarks, described as the Bill's pre-emptive status. From the beginning, it was the Bill's supremacy over other Hong Kong laws that most concerned Beijing.
Yet it was precisely that supremacy that liberal lawyers and human rights groups here regarded as the Bill's most valuable aspect. Even the most comprehensive Bill of Rights would be of little use unless it had the force to render invalid any law found to conflict with its provisions.
Some encouragement may be drawn from the report that Mr Lu regards the contents of the Bill as unexceptionable. In the past, Chinese officials expressed concern, among other things, that it would undermine the effectiveness of the territory's law enforcement agencies. That was a fear shared by many within the law enforcement establishment itself. But it also indicated China's determination to extract every ounce of the Draconian power bequeathed it under the territory's often outdated colonial laws.
Nevertheless, China's continued failure to understand the need for the Bill of Rights to enjoy a measure of supremacy remains a matter for serious concern. In the months of diplomatic manoeuvring that preceded the Bill's enactment, the Government carefully reduced its original status to leave the future Basic Law supreme. And to ensure China understood this, the Bill was entrenched through an amendment to the Letters Patent, Britain's pre-1997 constitution for Hong Kong, which would lapse when it was superseded by the Basic Law. The Government also left the Legislative Council free to repeal the whole Bill of Rights by simple majority, instead of a two-thirds majority, as local liberals had demanded.
The Bill is in large part a carbon-copy of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Basic Law states that the provisions of the covenant shall remain in force in the territory. Here Mr Lu would seem to have a problem, for downgradingthe effect of the provisions of the Bill of Rights would be in conflict with the intent of the Basic law. If Mr Lu is still considering diluting the Bill's status, the people of Hong Kong can take little comfort from the provisions either of the Bill itself or of the Basic Law.
