HONG KONG BAR ASSOCIATION
4
26th November, 1968.
Anthony Royle, Esq., M.P.,
constituted under the Emergency Regulations or some other committee which the Colonial Secretary has constituted.
If it refers to the former then the statement is a misre-
presentation or the provisions or Regulation 31 of the Emergency (Principal) Regulations and of the Emergency (Committee of Review) Rules made thereunder. Government's
statement refers to an "independent Committee of Review". Under the Emergency Regulations the Chairman and Members of the Committee are appointed by the Governor.“ The appointments are not gazetted and the identity of the Committee has never been made public. The Committee is not an appellate body and cannot act as such; its fund- tions are merely to make "recommendations" to the Colonial Secretary if any detainee objects against a Detention Order. The Colonial Secretary is perfectly at liberty to reject its "recommendations"
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The last point made in Mr. Sedgwick's letter is that Detention Orders are for one year, suggesting thereby that there is some terminal point beyond which the powers of the Colonial Secretary to order the detention of a
person must come to an end. This is simply not the case. Although Regulation 31 authorizes detention for one year there is nothing to prevent the renewed detention of a person simultaneously upon his release thereby in effect making the detention perpetually renewable from year to year.
It seems to the Bar Committee that whilst there is every justification for the Hong Kong Government to assume emergency powers in times of emergency, attempts by the Hong Kong Government to justify the exercise of those powers in terms or regularity when the emergency has passed must give cause for great concern. If it is
cont.