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SOUTH CHINA
DETAINEES MORNING POST
Sir, Who are the people at present being detained without trial in Hongkong? They, like Grey, seem to have been lost beneath all the eloquently stated principles. And yet if we knew a little more about them, perhaps we might also start to see that the Hongkong Government's motives for de- taining them are not in fact as
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simple or pure as they are usually assumed to be.
Of course, any attempt to find out these facts ends up inevitably in the swamp of official secrecy. But one thing does seem to be certain: the detainees are not the most important or, from Government's viewpoint, the most dangerous of local left-wing figures.
Another point, though less certain, seems to be fairly clear: some of those who were detained and have since been released are relatively in- fluential trade union figures, whereas some of those who appear to have been redetained, presumably for a second year, are not very important local businessmen.
What explanation can we find for these strange facts? The only one I can think of is that these people are being detained, not to punish them for crimes which they have committed nor to prevent their involvement in crimes which they may be likely to commit, but rather as a threat to those more important Communist figures whom the authorities have not SO far dared to detain at all. In other words, they, just like Grey, have been chosen as pawns in a rather unpleasant game of bluff and blackmail.
If this supposition is correct, the Government's professed respect for democratic principles of justice would be nothing more than a hypocritical at- tempt to cover up the raw facts of power politics. But then hypocrisy is all part of the game too, isn't it?
IAN MCLACHLAN.
$
Mr. Ganymara
Ha Carter K.271.
RECEIVED IN
ARCHIVES No.31 27NOV 1968
HKKILI