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of clemency be made in Hong Kong to include the release of both convicted prisoners and detainees.
The Governor
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He
was unwilling for reasons which we fully accepted to exercise clemency in favour of convicted prisoners. did however agree that he would, in so far as security considerations permitted, release detainees starting first with those of less importance and those who had been detained the longest. He made no commitment to release all detainees within a given period nor did he accept that releases were to be used as a major instrument in a policy of "de-escalation". In August, Sir D. Hopson proposed that if the Chinese fulfilled their undertaking given at the end of July to grant exit visas to all members of the Mission who wished to leave China we should respond by the release of a significant number of detainees. This was agreed by Ministers and the Governor was
The Flag B(756) recommended to act accordingly (0.0. telegram No. 1362). Flag C Governor replied in Hong Kong telegram No. 1005 (after
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discussion with Sir D. Hopson in Hong Kong) saying that he
would follow a policy of matching the trickle of exit visag with a trickle of releases of detainees subject to examination of the circumstances at each time and without aiming at
arithmetical equality. He would also prefer to release
detainees in small groups rather than in one large group. He also made it clear that we should soon be reaching a point when only the hard-core detainees were left ́and that very careful consideration would have to be given to the
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advisability of their release.
I do not therefore think that
CONFIDENTIAL
/ Mr. Cradock