Wow, what a few weeks! It’s not often we get three massive typhoons bombarding the SAR in such a short period and what a wild wild ride it’s been. Hagiput started the frenetic period with lashings of rain and strong winds causing a lot of mainly superficial damage and inconvenience to our daily lives. The financial typhoon, Global Meltdown, has been building across the globe over the last few months as the bubble of delusion and ‘free’ money expanded beyond what even a fantasy film script writer could conceive. I doubt even the most pessimistic fantasist could have envisaged the super typhoon that would rip though the world’s financial markets and the destruction it would, and will continue to cause as it wreaks the house of cards the financial markets have constructed over the last few years. We have yet to feel the fallout in the ‘real’ economy and while it will undoubtedly cause real hurt and pain to many, in the words of one broker “This too will pass”, the markets and the economy will recover.

The third and easily the most destructive of the three typhoons continues to grow un-noticed and ignored by many. Typhoon Censorship, gained storm status with the release earlier this month by the government of the Review of the Control of Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance paper. A document conceived after a, to put it politely, series of asinine rulings from the Television and Licensing Authority concerning what was/is indecent or obscene – usually delivered without any explanation or consistency. On a daily basis I suspect that very few of us even consider Article 27 of the basic law, most of you I expect consider it your right to say or do as you want as long as it doesn’t involve underage minors, crime or violence and offers a modicum of respect to the people around you. Well you don’t inaliably have that right. The freedom of speech, freedom of association and assembly are granted to you by the state.

Article 27 : Hong Kong residents shall have freedom of speech, of the press and of publication; freedom of association, of assembly, of procession and of demonstration; and the right and freedom to form and join trade unions, and to strike.

These hard won, and easily lost, freedoms we take so much for granted are what define our society. In the consultation paper the governments still fail to offer a hard guide on the difference, if there is one, between what is indecent and what is obscene. Yet proposes to deprive us of the personal freedom to use the internet by instigating a filtering service that is far more draconian than the Mainlands much derided ‘Golden Shield’. They want to enact an age verification programme that requires you to enter your credit card details to surf the web – have they never heard of phishing and identity fraud. They propose to regulate uploading of content to the internet – sending a friend pictures of you sunbathing on the beach could be declared obscene by an anonymous civil servant and have you banned from using the internet. And as usual when a civil servant makes his or her decision they don’t need to provide a reason and you will have no right to dispute their decision and you can’t challenge them for incompetence or error because the law absolves a civil servant of any liability and responsibility for his actions.

Freedom of Speech is a hard won right, don’t let it go gently without a typhoon of protest. It will be far harder to live with its loss than any damage inflicted by those meteorological and financial storms.

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