記協對《淫褻及不雅物品管制條例》的意見書 ( 傾向反對淫審 )

The Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) notes the government assertion that Hong Kong is a free and open society. As such, controls on publications should be as light as possible, and should be imposed only in accordance with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which protects freedom of expression and provides that restrictions to protect public morals shall be imposed only by law and where necessary.

Legislating on matters of a moral nature is a difficult area - and no more so than in a territory such as Hong Kong, where traditional moral values are interspersed with a growing acceptance of more liberal attitudes, in particular towards matters of a sexual nature.

The HKJA calls for a liberal approach towards this complex subject, rather than imposing further restrictions on obscene and indecent articles. The existing legislation is already stricter than that in many developed countries. For example, few such countries have provision for tribunals with the power to rule on articles submitted to it - a move which can lead to self-censorship among publishers.

Such a trend was evident in a case involving the October 2008 issue of the National Geographic magazine. Its publisher in Taiwan apparently took the decision to wrap the magazine in a plastic packet with a warning about the contents, which featured several computer-generated images of naked Neanderthal people in far from provocative poses.

We further note that a number of developed countries do not have classification systems at all. They include England, the United States, Canada, Germany and Taiwan. They have specific legislation to handle obscene articles, and either have no legislation governing indecent articles or handle such issues through the common law. As such, they do not have any definition of indecency.

The HKJA would therefore call on the government to scrap the law relating to indecent material, and to study alternative ways to protect minors from exposure to such articles. The government could then focus on the control of obscene materials. ...... ......


http://www.hkja.org.hk/portal/Site.aspx?id=A1-762&lang=zh-TW