Gagged and Bound

2007 saw several high-profile cases where the government and police came down hard on supposed indecent or illegal publications. Douglas Young, the founder of GOD was arrested for selling T-shirts bearing Chinese characters associated with the triad group 14K; a netizen was arrested and prosecuted for posting a hyperlink to a pornographic image and Chinese University students were arrested for publishing “indecent” survey questions in their newspaper. The outrage against this particular incident was such that 2,000 people sent copies of the bible to the Obscene Articles Tribunal, citing that it contains passages that they must pass as obscene: an act of protest that made international headlines.

At the moment, we may not see the government coming down on obscene publications as an area of concern. After all, not everyone plans to enter into a career in porn publishing. But if you take a look at last year’s freedom of expression wrangles, you’ll see that it doesn’t take much for people to fall foul of the law.

Homosexuality in the Media

For a supposedly modern, international city, Hong Kong can be alarmingly regressive when it comes to homosexuality. In January last year, the Broadcasting Authority issued “strong advice” to RTHK to pay more attention to broadcasting standards after the government-run station ran a show on its current affairs program Hong Kong Connection in 2006 that they ruled to be “partial and biased towards homosexuality.” Shortly after this, a love poem written by a lesbian couple exhibited in the Cultural Centre was ruled to be “indecent” by the Obscene Articles Tribunal and subsequently pulled. How indecent was the poem? Well, it was pretty vanilla, with some of the more racy lines translating to: “kiss and pinch your thighs” and “kiss you, tongue upon tongue” and “have to be good and touch myself.”

These two incidents show that our outwardly liberal society still has a way to go in terms of accepting minorities. “Hong Kong is regressing, relapsing, declining and deteriorating,” says Joseph Cho, one of the gay men who appeared in Hong Kong Connection. Anthony Fung Ying-him, associate professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Chinese University, says the government should do more than just impose censorship when a topic such as homosexuality comes up. “A supposedly liberal society should be open to honest discussions of gender and sexuality,” he says.

The Chinese University Sex Survey

And it’s not just the arts that have suffered from censorship. Last year, the OAT turned its eye to Hong Kong’s education institutions, too. In February and March, the Chinese University Student Journal ran a sex survey that included questions relating to bestiality and incest. The Obscene Articles Tribunal ruled the content to be Grade-II indecent material. Such materials can only be distributed with a protective wrapping and bearing a warning that they should not be read by people under 18 years old. The maximum penalty for publishing indecent material without this warning is a $400,000 fine and a one-year jail sentence, now a very real possibility for the students running the paper at the time.

Hyperlinking to a Porn Site

People are even being hounded by the OAT on the internet. Last May, 48-year-old Woo Tai-wai was fined $5,000 and given a criminal record for publishing an obscene article through the internet. His offence? Posting a text hyperlink in an adult chatroom called “Adult Images Posting Area.” But is hyperlinking to a porn site the same as distributing indecent material?