- 12 -
- promulgation process, such as Decisions and Explanations of the National People’s Congress and the Standing Committee, were admissible because they bore directly on the context, purpose and constitutional status of the NSL. The Address to the Standing Committee on 30 June 2020 on adoption of the NSL as a law of the HKSAR made it clear that the NSL converged with the Mainland Law on National Security, rather than more generally with the Mainland system so as to require courts to search for similarly-worded Mainland laws as possible aids to construction. (emphasis added)
21. According to the judgment of Court of Appeal in HKSAR v Ma Chun Man[1], although the NSL did not provide for how cases were to be classified into the serious or minor categories, since it was the legislative intent of the NSL to converge and be complementary with the local laws, when the courts dealt with this issue, the local legal principles on sentencing were applicable. Whether a case should be classified as “serious” or “minor” depended on the overall actual circumstances of the case. When the court assessed the seriousness of the circumstances of the case, the prime focus was on the offender’s acts, as well as the actual consequences, potential risks and possible influence entailed.
22. In that case, which was about a charge of “incitement to secession”, contrary to NSL 20 and 21, the Court of Appeal in considering whether the offence fell within the category of “serious nature”, took into account factors including (but not limiting to) the following: (i) Hong Kong was still facing a high risk of endangerment to
- ↑ [2022] 5 HKLRD 246
