We, the undersigned, representing civil society and human rights organizations across the world, condemn the Hong Kong government’s plans to introduce domestic security legislation under Article 23 of the Basic Law.
The Hong Kong government formally launched the legislative process with a four-week “public consultation” on 30 January 2024. The law is set to prohibit seven types of offenses, including treason, espionage, and theft of state secrets. Many of these proposed provisions are vague and criminalize people’s peaceful exercises of human rights, including the rights to freedom of association, assembly, expression and the press. The crime of “seditious intention,” for example, proposes to punish those who “induce…disaffection against” against the Chinese government and “to incite any other person to do an act that does not comply with the law of the HKSAR,” which would include any peaceful criticism against the government.