It is an international convention to enact anti-secession law to check
behaviors aimed at separating the motherland and to safeguard the national
sovereignty and territorial integrity. No sovereign country in the world will
put up with behaviors of splitting the motherland and undermining the unity of
the nation.
The Constitutions of many countries in the world have explicit provisions
on the indivisibility of the national sovereignty. For example, the Constitution
of Australia stipulates that no state has the right to secede from the
federation. In fact, the criminal law's of many countries provides that the high
treason including behaviors aimed at splitting the country is considered as a
felony that will be severely punished.
The most serious secessionist crisis recorded in the history of the United
States was no other than the American Civil War in the 19th century. The
original Constitution of the United States of America, which formed the basis
for establishing the country, did not state clearly that no State had the right
to secede from the federation. On March 4, 1861, when Mr. Lincoln, who was
inclined to abolish the slavery system, assumed the office of Presidency, the
States in the south announced to pull out from the Republic in accordance with
the Constitution of the United States of America. To cope with the situation,
the United States passed the Anti-Secession Resolutions of the New York
Legislature, which directly declared that the action of the southern States to
secede from the federation was illegal.
The secessionist threat that the Canadian government faced came from the
separatist forces in Quebec where French is the mother tongue. In the 20th
century, the separatist movement became a political force with organization and
programme and established the Party Quebeckers seeking for independence. The
party won the election of Quebec in 1976 and held two referendums in 1980 and
1995 respectively by cashing in on the flaw of the Canadian federal law in this
aspect. The Canadian government took a series of actions, including powerful
legal means to curb the secession forces and safeguard the unity of the nation.
On August 20, 1998, the decree of the Supreme Court of Canada clearly ruled that
Quebec must get the approval of the federal government and other provinces if it
was to become independent and could not decide on its own. In the following
year, the federal government put forward the Authority Definition Act to
undercut the right of the provinces and vindicate the dignity of the federal
government. The Authority Definition Act was passed in March 2000 by the
Parliament to check the Quebec separatist trend on legal ground.
In addition to countries mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, the United
Kingdom, Russia and Turkey etc. have also enacted a range of similar laws or
made related rulings aiming at checking the domestic secessionist forces. All
these laws or rulings are either aiming at enforcing the power of the central
government or severely punishing the behaviors of splitting the nation to check
separatist activities by resorting to various means from various angles and to
crack down on separatist forces. All in all, the formulation of the
anti-secession law or laws and rulings with similar contents has become an
international practice. The Anti-Secession Law passed by the People's National
Congress of China recently is of no exception. In nowadays, as the practice of
safeguarding country's unity and defending the national sovereignty has been
widely recognized by the mainstream of the international community, the attempt
of splitting the nation is unpopular and doomed to failure.
By Zhang Mingming and Zhou Minjun
(Mar. 23, PLA Daily)