China Frees Hong Kong Journalist

Sending mixed messages on the prospects of Hong Kong’s human rights after it reverts to Beijing rule, China freed a Hong Kong-based journalist from a Chinese prison Saturday even as it pushed ahead with plans for tightened controls on the territory’s civil liberties.

Chinese authorities paroled Xi Yang, a Chinese-born reporter for Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper, after he had served three years of a 12-year sentence on charges he stole state secrets. Xi won release because he “showed signs of repentance,” the official New China News Agency said.

Newspaper colleagues greeted Xi with a large cake on his arrival back in Hong Kong late Saturday night. Looking haggard but happy, he told the Reuters news agency that he was “surprised by the release.” His sister read a letter from their father expressing joy and his gratitude toward those who protested Xi’s 1994 conviction, which came in a closed court hearing.

Xi was arrested while on assignment in China in 1993 after reporting on Beijing’s policies on interest rates and gold before the government had officially distributed the information. The severity of his sentence shocked Hong Kong journalists and human rights activists, who took it as a warning for the media here to behave after China reclaims the territory from Britain in July.

Hong Kong’s British governor, Chris Patten, who had strongly condemned Xi’s imprisonment but could not intervene because Xi was a Chinese citizen, said he was delighted by the release, calling it “very good news for Hong Kong.”

Xi’s release, surprisingly, came during a crackdown on the media in China and followed recent warnings to journalists in Hong Kong to stop reporting unfavorably on the Chinese government or its policies on Taiwan and Tibet.

On Tuesday, a Chinese-language newspaper in Hong Kong published guidelines on how reporters here should write about the upcoming hand-over, stating that Britain never had sovereignty over Hong Kong but merely “carried out colonial rule” in the “Chinese territory.”

But Xi’s parole may have been timed to reassure Hong Kong residents outraged by plans announced last week by a China-backed committee to roll back some of the territory’s human rights after the hand-over.

A group of legal experts on the Preparatory Committee, charged with overseeing Hong Kong’s transition from British to Chinese rule, recommended stronger restrictions on political freedoms, including requirements that protesters request police permission for a demonstration a week ahead of time and that all meetings of more than 20 people be formally registered. The panel also moved to void core provisions of Hong Kong’s Bill of Rights.

The action drew criticism from around the world, and local activists say they expect it to be discussed at an upcoming international human rights conference in Geneva. Despite public opposition, changes to 25 laws are expected to be rubber-stamped by the China-backed Provisional Legislature that will replace the territory’s elected body July 1.

The recommended revisions were on the agenda at the Provisional Legislature’s first meeting Saturday, in the Chinese border city of Shenzhen. Although the shadow body will not legally exist until after the hand-over, its members elected pro-China legislator Rita Fan as their speaker and began preparations to set up new laws after the transition. The group will meet in China until July to avoid legal challenges in Hong Kong.

Of the Provisional Legislature’s 60 members, 33 serve on the existing legislature and will shuttle weekly from Hong Kong to Shenzhen to undo many of the laws they once created. Fan, for example, supported the Bill of Rights when it was established in 1992 but has said she changed her mind because of “new information.”

The top Chinese officials overseeing Hong Kong, Lu Ping and Zhou Nan, presided over the meeting and lauded the assembled members.

“In ensuring the smooth transition of Hong Kong, you will be playing a significant role,” Lu told the group gathered in the Peach Garden Conference Hall. “You will write a glorious page in the return of Hong Kong to the motherland.”

After the meeting, Hong Kong’s future leader, Tung Chee-hwa, defended the proposed controls on civil liberties.

“The question is, do we want to have a society which emphasized a great deal of individual rights, or do we want to have a society that emphasized total collective responsibility?” Tung said. Restoring strict controls, he insisted, “is not going backward. . . . It’s finding a way forward for our own community.”