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Bill of Rights repealed
The Bill of Rights (Amendment) Ordinance was repealed by the provisional legislature so that the bill cannot cover legal disputes between individuals.
The 1997 amendment, introduced by ousted legislator Lau Chin-shek as aprivate member's bill and passed by the former legislative council in June 1997, three days before the handover. The amendments allowing lawsuitsbetween individuals had been suspended since July amid fears of opening aflood of trivial lawsuits.
The government thus introduced a bill to repeal the amendment bill andwas endorsed by a vote of 45 to five.
Secretary for Home Affairs David Lan Hong-tsung said extending the law hadaltered its original intention. The Basic Law already guarantees human rights protection under international covenants which do not require stateparties to impose obligations on individuals. Specific legislation onprivacy and discrimination was the best way to protect individual rights, Lansaid. He also said the amendment would result in a substantial increase ofligitation between private persons and place an unnecessary legalburden on the public.
Selina Chow of the Liberal Party said Mr. Lau's amendment had causedconfusion. But Lau Chin-shek said this was blatant suppression of human rights. Law yuk-kai, director of Human rights Monitor also said that it wasmisleading and disingenuous of the government to say its bill did not water down protection in the ordinance. "Should the provisionallegislature pass the bill, it would send a negative message that theprovisional legislature considers it an indispensable duty to erode humanrights protection and contravene the International Covenant on Civil andPolitical Rights," he said.
Another ousted legislator Margaret Ng opined that it is highly misleadingfor government officials to tell the public that Mr. Lau's amendment made theOrdiance binding on private persons, it is far from the reality. Theeffect and impact of the amendment is merely that once a legislation isrepealed for contravention of the Bill of Rights, it is repealed altogether,for all purposes.
The reason of such amendment was, in a District Court judgementconfirmed by the Court of Appeal in the infancy of the Bill of Rights Ordinance,the court decided to the effect that a legislation repealed under Section 3 ofthe Ordinance is repealed only as far as it applied to the Government or public authorities, but not as between private persons. The case wasthought to be wrongly decided by lawyers and academics at that time. With such background, Lau proposed the amendment to remedy the situation.
Ng said that the step taken by the government can only send the messageto the public and to the world that the HKSAR government is zealous to curtailrights.