Secretary for Justice on advocating independence of Hong Kong

Following is the transcript of remarks made by the Secretary for Justice, Mr Rimsky Yuen, SC, at a media session after attending the Basic Law Quiz-cum-Prize Presentation Ceremony today (April 23):

Reporter: People's Daily actually commented that the Government is doing nothing or taking no legal action against people who advocate independence. Do you think such claim is legitimate? Do you think it's valid?

Secretary for Justice: If I reckon correctly, I think the article that you mentioned didn't actually suggest that the Government is doing nothing, but rather I think what the article is suggesting is that the Hong Kong SAR Government should be looking into this question and this is what we have been doing. As I was saying in Cantonese just now, we have been liaising with law enforcement agencies and we are also internally looking at this question from four perspectives. The first perspective being the Companies Ordinance, the second perspective being the Societies Ordinance, the third being the Crimes Ordinance and the fourth one is whether it will cause any other criminal offences. We are looking at the question and this is what we can disclose at this moment. So it's not the situation that we are not doing anything. And if I may also repeat what I said in Cantonese just now, it has been our stance that advocating independence of Hong Kong is totally contrary to the Basic Law and also contrary to the legal status of Hong Kong. So we take this matter seriously and we are not suggesting that we would condone any acts which are contrary to the laws of Hong Kong.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)

Ends/Saturday, Apr 23, 2016