Macao further restricts political freedoms with revisions to nat’l security law

Echoing the crackdown on freedoms in neighboring Hong Kong, the former Portuguese colony of Macao has revised its legal system to face “new adverse challenges in terms of national security.”
The government of the tiny enclave, heavily dependent on its gambling industry, said changes to the Law on Safeguarding National Security were needed as an upgrade to legislation first enacted in 2009, a decade after Macao’s handover to Chinese rule.
“As the country presently faces new adverse challenges in terms of national security, the revision of Macao’s Law on Safeguarding National Security is a compulsory step to respond effectively to risks and threats,” the government said.
It gave no details of the changes passed Thursday by the special administrative region’s rubber-stamp legislature.
However, the Global Times newspaper published by China’s ruling Communist Party said Friday that the changes target espionage, “foreign interference” and Taiwan independence supporters. According to the newspaper, it also expands the definition of crimes such as abetting and supporting insurrection and the preparation or intent to commit such criminal acts.