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/the
THE DEATH PENALTY
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1. There are regular demands in the Legislative Council and in the press as well as from various organised groups that the death penalty should be applied in Hong Kong.
A death sentence
has not been carried out in the Colony since 1966 owing, in
effect, to UK Parliamentary considerations. Some of the sting appears to have been taken out of this issue, at least temporarily, by the Colonial Secretary's statement in the Legislative Council last November that whenever the Governor
commutes a death penalty he would, save in exceptional circum- stances, impose/alternative punishment of imprisonment for life.
Line to Take
2. If Sir Y K Kan raises this issue, Lord Goronwy-Roberts
may wish to say that Ministers are fully aware of the resentment that the issue of the death penalty gives rise to in Hong Kong and to remind him that the situation is brought about by the fact "that the balance of opinion in the UK Parliament is still firmly
against capital punishment.
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