Background Briefing

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The September Elections

The electoral framework: flawed democracy

Hong Kong’s Legislative Council electoral arrangements are a confusing hodgepodge of leftover British colonial arrangements designed to minimize the public’s role in governing, and new rules put in place by the government after the 1997 handover to ensure Chief Executive Tung had a pliant legislature.  The current electoral rules graft a “proportional representation list” system on top of one that already features small, easily controllable constituencies.  However, for the first time in Hong Kong’s history, the electoral system will allow half of the legislature to be elected by democratic election in geographical constituencies, up from twenty-four seats in the 2000 election.

Of sixty seats in the Legislative Council, thirty will be chosen through so-called functional constituencies, with tiny electorates and largely guaranteed control. Functional constituencies are constituencies based on professional, commercial, or industrial affiliations.

Because their business interests make them dependent, most legislators from functional constituencies are reliable backers of Tung’s and Beijing's policies. Among the functional constituencies in Hong Kong are constituencies representing banking, tourism, the legal profession, and labor.

As currently constructed, the functional constituencies fall far short of the principle of universal suffrage. Of the more than three million voters who registered to vote in the geographical elections in 2000, only 160,000 had an additional vote in a functional constituency contest. The vast majority of Hong Kong’s voters are therefore disenfranchised, unable to vote for any functional constituency representative.

The disparity in size also means that individual Legislative Councilors represent very different-sized constituencies. Some geographic legislators will represent hundreds of thousands of constituents and some functional legislators will represent several hundred voters. Most functional constituencies have less than 10,000 voters.  Indeed, nine of the 30 functional constituency seats were returned uncontested in 2000 – the constituencies are so small, challengers have no hope of winning.


Voter intimidation and manipulation

In past elections, some Hong Kong voters reported being pressured to vote for pro-Beijing candidates. Less than six months before the 2004 election, reports began to surface that, once again, voters were being told who to vote for.

But in 2004, a new trick surfaced: the use of mobile phone cameras to verify an individual’s vote. One check on voter intimidation is that, given reasonably secure voting stations and private voting booths, there is no way to verify that an individual voter responded to a threat by voting a certain way. Mobile phone cameras, a relatively recent invention, potentially eliminated that check. According to legislator Margaret Ng, attempts at voter intimidation are not a new phenomenon in Hong Kong. “What’s new is that they have learned a way to monitor compliance,” Ng said.84  

The discovery of the new tactic came in mid-May. On May 13, an anonymous caller told the audience of a radio call-in show that he was pressured to vote for pro-Beijing candidates. The threat was explicit, and he was told that he had to provide proof of his compliance:

A senior staff member of my company asked me to vote for pro-Beijing candidates, instead of pro-democracy candidates. To make sure I have [sic] done that, he told me to take pictures of my completed ballot sheet with my mobile phone camera... He told me that if we voted for pro-democrats, our company's business would be in trouble.

After the phone call, other cases of alleged voter intimidation came to light. Frontier Legislator Emily Lau told reporters that she had received a phone call from a Hong Kong voter with business interests in Guangdong who told her that he had been pressured to give the names and contact numbers for friends in Hong Kong.

Other voters called in to “Teacup in a Storm” to report their own experience of being pressured. Two voters reported that they were called by members of their own family on the mainland, who warned them that, if they did not vote for pro-Beijing candidates, then their relatives in China would be at risk.

According to one caller:

I asked if I didn’t vote for (DAB candidate) Choy So-yuk, can I vote for another? My uncle told me I have to vote for her otherwise he will be in trouble. This is outrageous.85

Another voter reported receiving a similar phone call from her relatives on the mainland:

Elections are Hong Kong’s affair and they (her relatives) never said any such things in the past. I repeatedly asked them why and they sounded terrified. I suspect someone has bugged their phone.86

Soon after these incidents were reported, Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, a local human rights monitoring group, set up a hotline for individuals to report cases of intimidation. Among the cases reported to the hotline:

  • A Hong Kong resident who lives over the border in Guangdong but works in Hong Kong was approached by a member of the local district committee, who told him that they had orders that he should tell his family and friends to vote for pro-Beijing candidates in the September election.
  • A woman who is a member of the Fujian Clan Association in Hong Kong was called by a woman identifying herself as a member of the association. The caller asked how many registered voters there were in her family, claiming that the information was for a survey. When the woman expressed some reluctance to give the requested information, the caller hung up.
  • A property management company in Hong Kong owned by a pro-Beijing businessman asked its employees to fill out a survey. Part of the survey asked for information about members of the employee’s family who are registered to vote. Although there was no reason given for the survey, employees believed that the information would be used to contact members of their family and urge them to vote for pro-Beijing candidates.
  • Employees of a Hong Kong handbag manufacturing company were asked by a mainland branch office to provide it with information about family members, including the address and contact information of eligible voters in the family. Employees were asked to fill out a form with the requested information, but were not allowed to leave with the form: they had to complete it on the spot.  

Such incidents raise real concerns about efforts by mainland entities to pressure voters in Hong Kong. The scope and organization of the effort are unknown. In some cases, official attempts to influence Hong Kong voters may have become so routine that such incidents are not viewed as anything out of the ordinary. One pro-democratic legislator told Human Rights Watch:

These days, when (my constituents) go back to China, back to their home village, then the village head will have an informal meeting, trying to persuade them not to vote for the pro-democracy camp. There’s no money, no pressure. They are just saying that these people (the democrats) are bad.87

The constituents were not reporting the conversations as a problem, and the legislator did not view such incidents as interference by the mainland.

After the hotline was set up, reports of voter intimidation began to decline.88 It is possible that the publicity given to the cases of those who came forward after being approached served as a deterrent. It is also possible that the intimidation continues, and that those making the threats now issue a more stern warning to those they contact that going public will also carry consequences. 

Vandalism attacks against democratic legislators 

On May 19, a staffer for Legislative Council representative Leung Yiu-chung found an unpleasant surprise waiting for him when he arrived at the lawmaker’s Kowloon office at 7.30am. Overnight, vandals had smeared faeces on the wall outside the office, and left a bag of excrement hanging by the office door.

The vandalism attack came just days after Leung introduced an amendment to a resolution in Legislative Council urging Chief Executive Tung to plead Hong Kong’s case for democracy with the central government in Beijing over the recent interpretation, a step that, despite repeated public calls for him to do so, Tung was unwilling to take.

On the day that the acts of vandalism were discovered, the Legislative Council voted down Leung’s proposal. The Legislative Council also rejected a motion introduced by Democratic legislator Albert Ho, expressing regret over Beijing’s interpretation. Although both Ho’s motion and Leung’s amendment were approved by the directly-elected and election committee members of the Legislative Council, the bills were solidly rejected by the functional constituency bloc. Under Legislative Council rules, motions must be approved by both groups in order to pass.89 

This was not the first such vandalism attack in Hong Kong. In September 2003, the Sha Tin office of outspoken legislator Emily Lau had been similarly defaced when unknown vandals smeared excrement outside her door. The incident was believed to be linked to Lau’s participation in a conference in Taipei organized by a Taiwanese pro-independence group.90 Lau’s office was vandalized again in June 2004, when vandals set fire to election posters and wrote, “Chinese traitors must die” on the wall outside her office in Tai Po. As in 2003, the attacks were linked to her comments on Taiwan.

Despite the repeated incidents, Lau has remained outspoken in her criticism of Beijing, and has turned her attackers’ rhetoric back on them. “They call me a radical. The person who engaged in an arson attack is a radical. Those who throw (excrement) at my door, they are radical.”91

Like other legislators, Lau has also been the target of threatening letters and phone calls from unidentified critics. Some callers have threatened violence. In the wake of the threats against Albert Cheung and Wong Yuk-man, such threats may seem less idle. “Last week someone called my office,” Lau said. “They said they would chop my head off and hang it outside the Legislative Council.”92 Referring to the overall situation created by such incidents, Lau said simply, “the atmosphere is very bad.” But, she said, there is a positive side to the attacks: “They are motivated by a desire to get rid of me, not just (my comments on) Taiwan. In a very macabre way, it is flattering.”93

Other legislators have found similar unsigned letters waiting for them in the day’s mail. “I’ve gotten threatening letters. And people have said things to me,” one democratic legislator said.94

Pro-democratic legislator Frederick Fung has also dealt with threatening phone calls and letters. “But the calls were answered by my secretary. She has a dangerous job,” Fung joked. One letter in particular implied both violence and central government involvement: “The central government [and] the people will treat you with violence at the Legislative Council office on election day . . . Treating the democratic-camp with violence is a must.”95

Fung also expressed some disappointment over the lack of action by the police. “I passed it to the police, and they said they would handle it. Nothing has happened after three months,” Fung said.96 Fung’s campaign has also been the victim of low-level vandalism, although not against his office. “Some of our publicity banners were slashed,” Fung said, referring to incidents in April and May 2004.


District Councilor Ray Au, a vocal member of the democratic camp who took to the streets with a bullhorn to encourage Hong Kong’s voters to turn out for the July 1, 2004, protest, has also seen his office vandalized. In an incident that took place a few days after Emily Lau’s office was attacked, vandals set fire to several posters outside Au’s office, and left behind a gas cylinder, an implicit warning that more severe attacks could follow. On Au’s wall, one of the vandals wrote, “All Chinese traitors must die.”97

On August 31, unknown individuals broke into Legislative Councilor Emily Lau’s home. Although nothing was taken, the intruders rifled through Lau’s personal documents. Lau voiced fears that her home may have been bugged during the break-in, and that her personal documents may have been photographed or otherwise copied. “Anything like this would raise eyebrows,” Lau said. “I don’t want to speculate. I don’t have evidence. I just want to know what the hell is going on in Hong Kong.”98

All of these incidents are troubling. It is impossible to know whether any mainland officials had any direct hand in these incidents, but at the very least, it seems likely that Beijing’s harsh rhetoric has contributed to an atmosphere in which those with strong pro-Beijing sentiments have been incited to threats and acts of vandalism.

The Alex Ho case

On August 13, Democratic Party District Councilor and first-time Legislative Council candidate Alex Ho was arrested in the Guangdong city of Dongguan for allegedly seeking the services of a prostitute. Ho, 46, travels regularly to Guangdong as the manager of a Hong Kong manufacturing firm, and was in Dongguan on business. According to his wife, Ho was awakened by a phone call to his hotel room in Don guan early Friday morning. Moments later, a group of Public Security Bureau officers entered the room. Ho was reportedly dragged from his bed and taken to the bathroom, where the PSB officers hit him and poured water on him.99 The officers then arrested him for visiting a prostitute and took him to a detention center.

Ho’s arrest raised serious due process concerns, and also raised the real possibility that the Chinese government was using his arrest – or at least his sentencing – to advance its political aims in Hong Kong. On same day he was arrested, Ho was sentenced to six months of administrative detention, or “reeducation through labor.” He was not given legal representation, and he was not was not given a trial. Instead, Ho was immediately taken to a detention center, where he continues to serve his six-month sentence.

After Ho’s arrest, Democratic Party members voiced concerns that Ho was targeted specifically to damage the democrats in the eyes of the public, and pointed to his unusually long sentence as proof that he was singled out. A Hong Kong policeman recently arrested in Guangdong for the same reason received only a fifteen-day sentence, and experts on the reeducation system in China pointed out that most individuals arrested for soliciting prostitutes receive no more than one or two month terms.100

Under Hong Kong law, if an individual is “serving a sentence of imprisonment” on election day, he is disqualified. The six-month term guaranteed that Ho would still be in detention on September 12, whereas a 15-day sentence would not have. Also, any individual who has served more than three months in the five years prior to the election is similarly ineligible. On August 24, the Hong Kong government announced that Ho could still stand for election, given the administrative nature of his detention.




[84] Human Rights Watch interview with Margaret Ng, Hong Kong, July 2004.

[85] Ambrose Leung, “More reports of alleged voter intimidation; callers to radio show say mainland relatives received threats,” South China Morning Post, May 15, 2003.

[86] Ibid.

[87] Human Rights Watch interview, Hong Kong, July 2004.

[88] Human Rights Watch interview, Hong Kong, July 2004.

[89] Jimmy Cheung, “LegCo rejects motion of discontent,” South China Morning Post, May 20, 2004.

[90] Ambrose Leung, “Police inaction riles Emily Lau,” South China Morning Post, September 13, 2004.

[91] Human Rights Watch interview, Hong Kong, July 2004.

[92] Human Rights Watch interview, Hong Kong, July 2004.

[93] Human Rights Watch interview, Hong Kong, July 2004.

[94] Human Rights Watch interview, Hong Kong  July 2004.

[95] Matthew Lee, “ADPL head receives election hate letter,” Hong Kong Standard, May 18, 2004.

[96] Human Rights Watch interview. Hong Kong, July 2004.

[97] Anthony Spaeth, “The Battle for Hong Kong,” Time Asia, July 5, 2004.

[98] “Hong Kong democrat says home burgled,” Reuters, August 20, 2004.

[99] Cannix Yau, “Democrat jailed in China,” Hong Kong Standard, August 17, 2004.

[100] Klaudia Lee and Nailene Chou Wiest, “Democrat’s punishment unusual, says scholar,” South China Morning Post, August 21, 2004.


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