Letter to Hong Kong By Emily Lau, Democratic Party member - TopicsExpress

Letter to Hong Kong By Emily Lau, Democratic Party member of the Legislative Council Broadcast on Radio 3, RTHK on 18 May 2014 Earlier this month, I flew to Geneva to attend a United Nations hearing on Hong Kong conducted by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Apart from myself, more than a dozen NGO representatives also went to the UN to lobby the Committee on problems in Hong Kong. Speaking at the opening of the hearing, the Committee’s country rapporteur, Mr Nicolaas Schrijver from the Netherlands, said that rapid economic developments in China did not mean the people could enjoy economic, social and cultural rights. He said the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, ICESCR in short, is inter-dependent and inter-related to another important covenant: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights i.e. the ICCPR. He said the peoples inability to enjoy civil and political rights would adversely impact on their ability to enjoy economic, social and cultural rights. The Hong Kong NGOs could not have agreed with Mr Schrijver more. When we met Committee members in a private session one day before the hearing, we made that very point to them. Speaking at the hearing on 8 May, Mr Schrijver said although Hong Kong and Macau are parties to the ICCPR, Mainland China has yet to ratify the covenant. He said many countries in Asia have already done so, and urged China to come on board. Replying to this point, leader of the Chinese delegation, Mr Wu Hailong, China’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, said the Chinese Government is making preparations to make laws consistent with the ICCPR. He said when China is ready, it would ratify the covenant. In fact Beijing signed the ICCPR in October 1998. Sixteen years later today, it is still not ready. How many more years does Beijing need? I told Committee members I am also a member of the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group. I urged the Committee to press Beijing to ratify the ICCPR, so that the rights of the Chinese people can be better protected. I said the human rights lawyers are important in helping China to establish the rule of law. They are very courageous and have made huge sacrifices, thus they should receive the support of the Committee. I also told Committee members that although Hong Kong is one of the richest cities in the world, the government has consistently refused to allocate more resources to provide the people with adequate and affordable housing. The government has also failed to provide adequate health and residential care for the ageing population. It has also failed to provide equal opportunities for students from poor and ethnic minority families to enable them to receive quality education, which will lift them from poverty. One reason why Hong Kong has these problems is that it does not have democracy. The lack of universal suffrage makes it difficult for the people to enjoy economic, social and cultural rights. The question of universal suffrage is the jurisdiction of the UN Human Rights Committee, which held hearing on Hong Kong’s implementation of the ICCPR in March 2013. In its Concluding Observation, the Committee urged the Hong Kong government to take all necessary measures to implement universal and equal suffrage in conformity with the ICCPR as a matter of priority for all future elections. The Committee said the Hong Kong government should outline clear and detailed plans on how universal and equal suffrage might be instituted and to ensure all the Hong Kong people can enjoy the right to vote and the right to stand for election in compliance with article 25 of the ICCPR. Last month the Hong Kong government submitted a follow-up report to the Human Rights Committee saying it is the common aspiration of the Chinese and Hong Kong governments to successfully implement universal suffrage for the Chief Executive election in 2017. The Hong Kong government said it has launched a five-month public consultation exercise and will summarise and consolidate the views received. It will then make a report to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, which will formally kick-start the constitutional process of amending the electoral methods. However the government failed to inform the Human Rights Committee Beijing officials said candidates for election as Chief Executive must “love China, love Hong Kong” and must not seek to confront the Central Government. Such remarks are widely seen as a signal for political screening, since Beijing is intent on barring people it cannot accept from standing for election. The follow-up report also failed to inform the UN that Beijing officials have said candidates for the chief executive election must be nominated by the Nominating Committee set out in Basic Law, and the Nominating Committee should be modelled on the Election Committee which chose C.Y. Leung as Chief Executive in March 2012. This committee consists of 1,200 people, most of whom are drawn from the business, professional and political community. Hong Kong has a population of 7 million, and about 3.5 million people are registered voters. However, only a quarter of a million voters have the right to choose members of the Election Committee, and C.Y. Leung was elected by 689 votes. Last Thursday, the Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs, Mr Raymond Tam, said three proposals for nominating candidate for the chief executive election, namely civil nomination, nomination by political parties and the three-track format, all supported by the pro-democracy camp, will unlikely to be included in the government’s second round of public consultation to be held later this year. This is because the proposals lack statutory grounds, would make it very difficult to achieve consensus and pose many challenges in implementing. Referring to the three proposals which will be put to the public in the Occupy Central e-referendum to be held on 22 June which all include civil nominations, the Chief Secretary for Administration Mrs Carrie Lam, questioned whether they constitute a legitimate choice. Mrs Lam should understand many Hong Kong people embrace civil nominations and political party nomination because they harbour grave reservations about the Nominating Committee, which they suspect would be used as a mechanism for screening out candidates unacceptable to Beijing. In hastily discarding popularly supported proposals without giving clear explanations and analysis, the government gives the impression it is only acting as a tool of Beijing. If all the popular proposals are ruled out, what is the governments proposal that can convince the Hong Kong people and the UN Human Rights Committee that the election of the chief executive by universal suffrage in 2017 would ensure the peoples right to vote and the right to stand for election? This is a question which Mrs Lam must answer. ENDS -- 立法會議員劉慧卿辦事處 Office of Emily Lau, Legislative Councillor