Dear
Mr. Mook
1
Frett:
FAURICE TRACY C/O HASTINGS AC
MARINA HOUSE & MEENUS 021) C
URGENT
4
I am concerned to learn from a very reliable source here
that the man who has been offered one of the most vital jobs in the
new Independent Commission Against Corruption is a Mr George V. Liu,
presently editor-in-chief of the Hongkong Standard Group of newspapers.
The job I gather he has been offered is that of Communİèx
Director of Community Relations, for the commission. He seems a strange
choice and one who is unlikely to instill much confidence in the
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commission among local jourmalists and others who know him.
I have three main reasons for concern:
The first is that Mr Liu has widely voiced the personal
opinion that "corruption can never heaux be beaten in Hongkong". A
large number of his colleagues could testify to that.
The second is that in the week following the escape from
Hongkong of police corruption suspect, Chief Superintendent Peter Godber,
Mr Liu was the author of the enclosed editorial (marked 1). While much
of it may appear unobjectionable it saya a lot about the man that at a
time when Hongkong was in uproar over the worst scandal to come out into
the open in years he shou d have been more concerned with the fA t that
the affair would detract from a relatively unimportant publicity
campaign against violent crime in a plave where by world standards
violent crime is limited than with the all-pervasive problem of
C
graft. His state ent that corru tion is not as serious an evil because
it seldom "results in terror of bodily harm" displays either a complete
* lack of knowledge of the problem or else an unwillingness to admit its
seriousness. As anyone in Hongkong who is in touch with the situation
t.
•