China's new security law poses no greater risk for activists in Hong Kong, says Rimsky Yuen
Beijing has not created any new offence in city, says justice secretary, but the safety of radicals who cross the border cannot be guaranteed
Chanting slogans on Hong Kong soil calling for the end of one-party rule in China will not be criminalised under the new national security law because no new offence is created, the secretary for justice said yesterday.
But Rimsky Yuen Kwok-keung also said the Hong Kong government was not in a position to guarantee that local activists would not be arrested if they went to the mainland.
Speaking after attending a legal seminar in Beijing, Yuen was grilled by the Hong Kong media on a newspaper report that had quoted Beijing sources as saying people who called for an end to Communist Party rule would face prosecution if they crossed the border.
"The new national security law did not create new criminal offences," Yuen said. "Acts done in Hong Kong will not draw wider or increased criminal liability due to the passage of the law."
The sweeping law passed by the nation's top legislature on July 1 covers various aspects from culture and economy to cyberspace and outer space. The law named the city for the first time as having a responsibility to protect national security.
Yuen reiterated that the law would not apply to the city as Article 23 of the Basic Law stated that it had an obligation to make its own national security law.
Lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan, who has organised annual commemorations of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown in Hong Kong and demanded the end of "one-party dictatorship", plans to join an official trip to the mainland to test whether he will be arrested.