CONFIDENTIAL
2 -
she would have been at no risk at all in Pakistan, where the Home Office wanted to send her, but it was still decided that she must be allowed to go to Ireland.
5. Nor, as we said in our telegram, were the court impressed by the argument that her purpose in going to Ireland might be to slip back into the UK again. This was one of the grounds which you cited for not wanting to send Leung to Taiwan. But it would not cut much ice here. Moreover you were not presumably referring to looser Hong Kong controls on travellers from Taiwan. If what was meant was that Vietnam would be less likely to let him slip again, then this itself sits rather oddly with the thesis that he would not be at much risk if sent back to Vietnam.
6. Herein lies, therefore, what I suspect may be a lot of future trouble for us all. If UK practice and parliamentary opinion would allow deportees to choose to be sent to a country which will take them, then Ministers would have to argue rather hard about the special circumstances of Hong Kong to justify a radically different practice there.
7. Amnesty (and lawyers in Hong Kong) having now tasted success, I think we may assume that it will not be long before we have another similar complaint. Your telegram no 32 suggested that we had given way, perhaps unwisely, to Amnesty's overstatement of the risks of returning Leung to Vietnam. But, as I have now explained, the implications are rather wider than that.
8. There is an obvious risk of Hong Kong coming to be regarded as a safe two-way bet - either successful infiltration or a free ticket to somewhere else. But I fear we may at some stage be under pressure to ask you to bring your practice more into line with the UK's. The purpose of this letter is informal preconsultation.
ENCS
сс
R Brash Esq, Saigon SEAD, FCO
.
Adow
A C Stuart
Hong Kong & Indian Ocean Department