MACAU ARTICLE 23 LEGISLATION: A DISTURBING

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 HONG KONG 002109 SIPDIS DEPT FOR EAP/CM AND DRL E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/17/2018 TAGS: PGOV PHUM MC SUBJECT: MACAU ARTICLE 23 LEGISLATION: A DISTURBING VAGUENESS REF: OSC CPP20081031701002 Classified By: Consul General Joe Donovan for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) ¶1. (C) Summary and comment: To meet the requirement of Article 23 of its Basic Law, the Macau Special Administrative Region Government put forth a draft "Law for Safeguarding National Security" in a consultation document released October 22. Macau observers see three deficiencies in the government's draft bill for Basic Law Article 23 legislation: a murky process of declaring information a state secret, no explicit "public interest" consideration for journalists revealing secret information, and a vague definition of "preparatory acts" for crimes identified by the law. Other concerns include the applicability of the law to Macau citizens outside Macau and the criminalization of spreading "false or clearly warped" information on behalf of foreign individuals or organizations. The bill, as currently drafted, appears to create legal grounds to threaten investigative journalism and some political activities under a state secrets rubric. End summary and comment. ¶2. (C) Macau's Basic Law contains the same Article 23 as Hong Kong's, which requires each region to "enact laws, on its own, to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People's Government, or theft of state secrets, to prohibit foreign political organizations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region, and to prohibit political organizations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign political organizations or bodies." The bill text was included in a consultation paper released by the Macau Special Administrative Region Government (MSARG) October 22 for a forty-day consultation ending November 30 (an informal USG translation of the bill text is available from Open Source Center). We discussed the legal issues relevant to the draft bill with a range of scholars, law professors and journalists, and attended a seminar at which legislators, lawyers and journalists discussed the draft. We have also reviewed relevant Macau laws and scholarly assessments of the draft bill. -------------- What is a "Secret"? -------------- ¶3. (C) The draft bill defines "state secrets" as "documents, information or items on matters that should be kept confidential (ying yuyi baomi) because they involve national defense, diplomacy or other affairs which, as stipulated in the Basic Law, touch on relations between the central government and the MSAR." Macau lawyers tell us Macau has no existing law on state secrets or national security, as the Portuguese law addressing these matters lost force at the time of the handover in 1999. The Macau Criminal Code of 1995 addresses protected information in terms of internal Macau government-level matters handled by civil servants (Art. 348) and protection of mail and telecommunications from unauthorized disclosures (Art. 349). Thus, should the bill become law, the only governing authority for state secrets in Macau would be the "certifications" of specific documents issued by the Chief Executive after consultation with the Central Government, per Article 6, Section V of the draft. These determinations would be fixed and final for purposes of a criminal case. ¶4. (C) Our interlocutors regard this provision as vague and open-ended in several respects. First, the act of obtaining a certification for purposes of a criminal case into illegal revelation of state secrets implies the document in question was not already marked as secret. On that basis, some observers believe the bill might grant the central government the right retroactively to declare almost anything a secret. One legal scholar, University of Macau Law Professor Jorge Godinho, contends that the draft only criminalizes revealing secrets related to foreign affairs, national defense, and central government-Macau communications. He therefore concludes that the courts and the government should not be able to seek a certification about a matter outside these areas. For example, Godinho argues, financial matters should not be declared secrets for which disclosure would constitute a crime. ¶5. (C) Second, both Godinho and Macau lawyer Nuno Lima Bastos note that the scope of "relations between the central government and the MSAR" covers a range of issues that goes far beyond foreign and defense matters. A strict reading of the Macau Basic Law indicates that, in addition to its purview over foreign and security affairs, the central government has either an explicit role in, or is reported to HONG KONG 00002109 002 OF 003 concerning: -- Interpretation of the Basic Law and the work of the Macau Basic Law Committee; -- The appointment of the Chief Executive and principal officials, including the Procurator General and judges; -- All legislation passed by the Legislative Assembly; -- Applicability of national laws to Macau; -- Court cases which may touch on areas of national significance; -- Emigration to Macau, Macau's negotiation of visa-free travel regimes with other countries/territories, and the issuance of passports; -- Civil aviation arrangements; -- Macau's continued autonomy in external agreements and organizations, as well as the validity of contracts, from prior to the handover; and -- Macau's establishment of trade missions overseas. As noted above, there are no criteria in either the draft or any other law cited by our contacts that defines the basis for declaring communications in any of these areas as secret. -------------- Who Defines the Public Interest? -------------- 6.(C) The draft states "if a person steals, pries into, or buys state secrets", he commits an offense unishable by two to eight years' imprisonment. he terms for"buying" (shoumai) or "stealing" (qequ) are straightforward, making use of unambiguus terms in Chinese. "Prying into" (citan) is a uch less precise term, the meaning of which could include approaching confidential sources. The draft includes no public interest defense for journalists revealing secret information. The Macau Law on Publications provides extensive rights to journalists to cover issues, to approach a range of sources for information, and to report critically on actions of the government. However, the Law on Publications specifically forbids approaching sources for information deemed secret in a judicial proceeding, state secrets of relevant government entities (undefined), materials deemed secret by law (also undefined),or matters related to personal privacy. ¶7. (C) Article 30 of the 1995 Macau Criminal Code does define "justified defense" (zhengdang fangwei) as a general legal excuse from prosecution, but none of our contacts felt it would automatically allow a "public interest" defense for journalists under the draft bill. Even the question of who might rule that there was a "public interest" in the revelation of a particular secret is unclear. Macau University Law Professor Luo Weijian told us confidently that the judge would have discretion at least to rule on the "damage" done to national interests by revelation of a secret; to date no one else to whom we have spoken concurs in this interpretation. In any event, our contacts have little faith in the largely Mainland-trained Macau judiciary's breadth of legal perspectives or resistance to political pressure. -------------- What Constitutes a "Preparatory Act"? -------------- ¶9. (C) Article 9 of the draft declares that "preparatory acts" for any of the criminalized behaviors of treason or revealing state secrets are punishable by three years' imprisonment. The consultation paper offers no further details beyond indicating such preparatory acts need to be punished but, since no serious crime would have been committed at the time of apprehension, the penalty should be "comparatively light"; i.e. three years in jail. While the vagueness of the definitions on secrecy is discussed above, the treason and sedition clauses at least carry a fairly specific condition of use of violence or incitement to others to use violence. However, Article 9 in no way makes explicit how an act is determined to be preparatory to commit such an offense. Intentionality is not considered in the text, nor is any specific threshold (gathering weapons, establishing illegal funding sources, formation of an organization for the purpose of committing a criminal act, etc.) HONG KONG 00002109 003 OF 003 -------------- Other Areas of Concern -------------- ¶10. (C) Macau contacts are concerned about the applicability of the law to acts committed outside Macau. Article 12 Section II states "the present law also applies to MSAR residents who commit acts stipulated in Articles 2, 3, 4, 5, and 9 outside of the MSAR." A concern not mentioned by our contacts as yet is Article 8/II/(II)/1's ban on working with foreign organizations or individuals in "collecting, preparing, or openly spreading false (xujia) or obviously warped information (mingxian yousuo waiqude xiaoxi)." The consultation document offers nothing further defining standards of falsehood or "warpedness". The question would be whether this standard of law could be used against those reporting on scandals or making critical evaluations of government performance (alleging their information is "false") or against groups like Falun Gong (alleging their information is "obviously warped".) DONOVAN