Hong Kong iMail: Activists vow to push [group] cause on UN visitors

February 5, 2001 HUMAN-RIGHTS groups and legislators have slammed government moves to outlaw the Falun Gong, and vowed to raise the issue with a United Nations Human Rights Committee delegation that arrives in the SAR tomorrow. Rights activists also accused Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee of ''white terror'' after the Secretary for Security said the government would ''keep a close eye'' on the [group]. Mrs Ip later clarified her statement, saying she had not said whether the [group] was unlawful. Three SAR groups - Human Rights Monitor, the Human Rights Commission and Justice, the Hong Kong branch of the International Commission of Jurists - yesterday expressed fears that the [group] would be suppressed. ''Falun Gong activities are legal and peaceful. There is no reason for the Security Bureau to pay 'close attention' to the religious body,'' Human Rights Commission director Ho Hei-wah said. ''I think the government is creating 'white terror'.'' Mr Ho's comments were echoed by The Frontier legislator Emily Lau Wai-hing, who said she would ask during question time in the Legislative Council on Thursday why the [group] needed to be ''closely watched''. Human Rights Monitor director Law Yuk-kai said his group would report the SAR Government's suppression of the Falun Gong to the United Nations Human Rights Committee of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) when the committee's deputy chairman, Judge Baghwati, arrives tomorrow. Mr Law said his group would also raise the Falun Gong issue with the Netherlands' Ambassador for Human Rights next week and ask the UN to make the [group] a discussion topic at a public hearing of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Geneva in April. The SAR Government has been caught in a political a tug-of-war between pro-Beijing forces who want the [group] suppressed and rights groups and pro-democracy forces who have urged a hands-off policy. Meanwhile, Democratic Party chairman Martin Lee Chu-ming said there was no urgency for the introduction of a subversion law, and expressed fears that the [group] was being used as a pretext to speed up such legislation. Executive Councillor Rosanna Wong Yick-ming said the government should be tolerant towards [group] practitioners as long as they abided by the law. She said the government had been studying the possibility of enacting legislation under the controversial Article 23 of the Basic Law, but had not yet set a timetable for enactment. Meanwhile, Hong Kong Association of Falun Dafa convenor Kan Hung-cheung said he would seek a meeting with Mrs Ip to counter her recent charges against the [group].