An Overview to Hong Kong

Last week, I had a travel to Hong Kong attending the South East Asia Media Defense Litigation Conference at 21 – 23 May. About the conference is all about how to defend media cases before the court. The conference was really good, because around 70 lawyers comes from ASEAN countries (Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, The Philippines, Cambodia, and Vietnam) was attend the conference. We had share our experience defending the media cases in our respective countries.

In my point views, Indonesia have been many great achievement on the legal development compare to other countries, we have, at least, protection of human rights in the constitution, we also have an independence constitutional court which are also play an important role in Indonesia legal development. However I also see that the lack of independence of the judiciary (especially the Supreme Court) of the ASEAN countries has creating many difficulties to defend the media cases. The other important factors were that we have no lawyer network in the ASEAN countries. I do think that the establishment of media lawyer network would help to improve the development of free press in ASEAN countries.

Well, outside the conference, Hong Kong is really beautiful region, many high rise building, and the most wonderful thing is the subway system in Hong Kong and also the public transportation. Except for the food, which is really hard to find the halal food, Hong Kong is the pearl of Asia. In Hong Kong I found a laptop that really cheap only cost for about Rp. 5 million for such technology within the laptop. Unfortunately I couldn’t buy it, no such moneyJ.

Well I believe I will visit Hong Kong if I have enough money, perhaps twenty years from now….. wakakakakakakak