Developments in Hong Kong and Macau
The Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (CFA), in a decision announced on May 5, overturned the convictions of eight Falun Gong practitioners for willful obstruction of police and assault. Hong Kong police arrested the practitioners in 2002 for obstructing a public thoroughfare in the course of a peaceful protest outside the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government. Several demonstrators resisted police efforts to arrest them for the obstruction. In 2002, a Hong Kong trial court convicted the demonstrators of obstructing a public place, willful obstruction of police, and (in the case of one demonstrator) assault. In 2003, a lower appeals court overturned the public obstruction convictions but upheld the willful obstruction and assault convictions.
The Department of State released its annual Human Rights Report on February 28. The report contains a comprehensive 70-page section on China that includes an analysis of human rights conditions in Tibet, Hong Kong, and Macau. While noting significant legal reforms and relaxed controls over migration in China, the report concludes that China’s human rights record remains poor and that the Chinese government continued to commit numerous and serious abuses of the right to free expression, due process, labor rights, freedom of assembly and religion, minority rights, and other internationally recognized human rights in 2004.
The following English translation was retrieved from the Macau Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China Web site on August 17, 2009. The Chinese text was retrieved from the Macau Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China Web site on August 17, 2009.
Basic Law of the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People' s Republic of China
(Adopted by the Eighth National People's Congress at its First Session on 31 March 1993)
(Unofficial Translation, For Reference Only)