Cypher/Cat. A
FLASH
CONFIDENTIAL
277
HONG KONG TO COMMONWEALTH OFFICE
Telno 132 29 January, 1968
CONFIDENTIAL
Addressed to Commonwealth Office telegram No. 132 of 29 January, Repeated for information to Peking.
271
Peking telegram No. 84: Visits to Prisoners.
I am most anxious to help, but I am not sure that latest Chinese request marks any great advance on terms of request
218 reported in my telegram No. 1908. The major difficulty remains
that of appearing to discriminate in favour of Communist prisoners, as we should do if we conceded the principle of special arrangements for visits to "other patriotic journalists" (of whom there are 12 at least) and to the people mentioned in paragraph 1(b) of Peking telegram under reference. In this respect the position remains as in paragraph 1 of my telegram No. 1910.
2.
There are some other problems from our point of view:
(a) The need to avoid giving large numbers of people the
excuse to appear at the prisons and stage demonstrations. (The Communists are currently organising hostile deputations to government buildings.)
(b) The need as far as possible to prevent the Communists
making propaganda capital out of these visits.
(c) The fact that prison rules preclude visits during holiday periods. The local public Chinese New Year Holiday ends on 1 February but of course festivities continue after that date.
3. On the other hand, I would certainly be prepared to let the Chinese know that special arrangements could be made for the two NCNA prisoners (who seem to me to be in a special position as employees of an official CPG organisation with quasi-consular status). I suggest that the reply to the point in paragraph 1(a) of the telegram under reference should be on the following lines: "If two unaccompanied NCNA officials care to call, and identify themselves at Stanley Prison to visit the two NCNA prisoners, Sit Ping and Lo Yu-ho, on Friday next, 2 February, before 4p.m. we would expect that an immediate visit could be arranged.
We would ask that the names of the visitors be communicated in advance to the Assistant Political Adviser by the NCNA and that there should be no publicity for the visit."
274 28/280
<CONFIDENTIAL>
14.
I must