The Macau Government defended today that the public consultation on the new national security law showed the “love” of the population for the motherland and the Chinese special administrative region, as 93.37% of the opinions are in favour.
“After summarizing the opinions gathered and comparing the opinions as to the trend and position, the majority of opinions are in favor of the guidelines and content of the revision of the law on the defense of state security of the Government of the Macao SAR [Macao Special Administrative Region ], which fully showed the deep feeling of ‘love for the country and love for Macau’ of the various sectors of society and the strong will of the population in relation to the defense of the general security of the State”, can be read in the conclusion of the report of the authorities.
“As for the very small number of opposing opinions [0.4%], the possibility that a part of the population is not well aware of the laws of Macau, especially the criminal law and the legal system for the defense of national security, is not excluded”, however, in the same document.
That is why, “therefore, the Macao SAR Government will continue to carry out legal dissemination campaigns in this area”, he adds.
In August, the Government of Macau advanced with the public consultation on the legislative review of the national security law, which lasted until October 5th, having received almost 6,000 opinions.
The new law provides, among many other provisions, to punish any person abroad who commits crimes against China’s national security.
The authorities announced that they want to “introduce adaptations to legally sanction any individual, organization or association that performs acts harmful to the security of the State through the various forms of liaison”.
The crime of state secession now encompasses the use of non-violent illicit means. The crime of “subversion against the Central People’s Government” is now broader and defined as “subversion against the political power of the State”.
To the crime of sedition, it is added that “it is criminally punishable who, publicly and directly, incites the practice of the crime of rebellion that harms the stability of the State”.
The crime of “subtraction of state secrets” is now called “breach of state secrets”, with a greater scope and aggravation of the sanction.
The new legislation proposes to create the crime of “instigation or support for sedition”, in order to “strengthen the criminal policy for the defense of national security and independently criminalize the instigation or related assistance”.
Another proposal is to create “the preventive measure of ‘interception of communication of information’”, which, in practice, means the possibility of accessing the record of communications from the last six months directly from telecommunications operators and network communication service providers. .
The new legislation also provides for the introduction of the measure of “temporary restriction of exiting borders”, which in practice makes it possible for someone to be detained without having yet been constituted a defendant, “in order to ensure that suspects can cooperate with the authorities police officers in the investigation and collection of evidence in a relatively short period of time”.
With the legislative revision, it is also intended to require the provision of activity data to organizations or suspects in Macau, leaving out only those who enjoy diplomatic immunity.
The authorities also intend to create provisions identical to those provided for in the Organized Crime Law, which determines the non-existence of the suspension of the sentence and the application to the defendant of the measure of preventive detention by the judge.
