YESTERDAY, the long arm of China's security apparatus stretched into the Macau Special Administrative Region on the first anniversary of the handover of Macau. President Jiang Zemin arrived for the anniversary celebrations yesterday afternoon, bringing with him a climate of tension and repression.

In the hours before Mr Jiang's arrival, about 25 Falun Gong members were rounded up by the police. Plainclothes police stormed the house of Macau's Falun Gong leader, claiming that he possessed banned items, perhaps even firearms, but they found nothing. A group from Hong Kong, including Falun Gong members and human rights activists such as ``Long Hair'' Leung Kwok-hung from the April 5th Action Group and the Information Centre of Human Rights and Democracy, were turned away by Macau immigration officials.

Inside the Macau ferry terminal, the Hong Kong activists were taken into a room for questioning. ``We have no concrete record now of how many are being detained. We just have a blacklist ... no, a list of `unwelcome' people,'' said a Macau police spokesman.

What does this say about Macau, one year after the handover? The first thing it says is that freedom of expression there has been dramatically eroded. Religious or political groups that are banned and repressed in the mainland can no longer find freedom in Macau.

Second, and perhaps more significant, yesterday's events underline for Hong Kong the importance of ``one country, two systems'', and highlight the fact that we still have basic freedoms. The same principle is supposed to apply in Macau, but clearly it does not.

In Hong Kong we still enjoy, for the time being at least, the freedom to express our political and religious views. Falun Gong members have been able to hold protests; mainland dissidents have been able to stay here and remain active; the long arm of China's security has not yet silenced Long Hair.

Yesterday's events in Macau should make us cherish the freedoms we have in Hong Kong, and fight to preserve them.

20 December 2000 / 02:31 AM

http://www.hk-imail.com/inews/public/

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Category: Falun Dafa in the Media