tim's experiment

Interesting piece in this morning’s SCMP by Ms Regina Ip, on the passage of the railway resolution. Readers who are familiar with Ms Ip’s biography will not find it surprising that she sympathises with the senior civil servant landed with the job of propelling an unpopular proposal through Legco, nor that she is not overly sympathetic to street demonstrations. No doubt there are points which could be made either way on many aspects of this topic, but in one matter Ms Ip falls into serious error.

She points out, which I do not dispute, that there are laws against obstruction or molestation of any legislator “going to, being within or going from the precincts of the chamber”. I agree that “technically speaking,” as she puts it, demonstrators obstructing such legislators “might have broken the law”. Demonstrations commonly involve technical breaches of the law, even if no legislators are in the vicinity. In many countries the forces of law and order are expected to temper their enthusiasm for legality with a recognition that public manifestations of opinion are a valuable part of freedom of expression. So the breaches are tolerated. But breaches they are.
What I do not accept is Ms Ip’s inclusion in the category of potential lawbreakers those demonstrators who “pursued them (legislators) with jeers and insults.”

I do not believe that the powers and privileges accorded to legislators by law extend to the criminalisation of jeers and insults. Even if they did, they would be liable to overthrow by the courts, because the right to jeer at legislators is clearly a mode of self-expression protected by the provisions on freedom of speech in the Bill of Rights Ordinance, the Basic Law, and even – hilariously – the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China. It is the right of any citizen of Hong Kong to jeer at legislators. It may even be a civic duty, as so many law-makers have an inflated notion both of their own importance and of the respect and affection which they inspire in ordinary members of the public.

I do not suggest that people should be encouraged to insult Ms Ip. Indeed if anyone did so in my presence I would be very tempted to apply some instant and crude plastic surgery to his nose. But even as my fist met his face I would be conscious that he was in the right and I in the wrong. For legislators, jeers and insults go with the territory. They are a poor substitute for the slave who used to ride in the chariot of triumphant Roman generals with the specific job of reminding the hero that he was still mortal. But they will have to do.