A
SAVINGRAM
To the Secretary of State for the Colonies.
From the Governor, Hong Kong.
January, 1952.
REGISTI AR'S OFFICE
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No.
18 JAN 1951 COLÜMAL WE
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Your confidential circular despatch 25526/1/51 of 30th March, 1951, and your confidential despatch 314 of the same reference dated 2nd November, 1951.
137/57
Council of Europe Convention of Human Rights.
Broadly speaking I should wish this Convention to apply eventually in Hong Kong. Nevertheless, at the present time there are considerable difficulties, due principally to Hong Kong's proximity to China and the political situation there, which stand in the way of immediate application.
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2.
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I consider that the Colony is, in fact, faced with such a "public emergency threatening the life of the nation" as is contemplated in Article 15 of the Convention. The Colony is severely overcrowded, with a floating alien population, much of which comes in from Communist areas where violence and complete negation of human rights are the order of the day; and to deal with the day to day administration of such people in dangerously congested conditions calls for rapid and sometimes arbitrary action such as could not, rightly, be tolerated in more normal conditions. Special measures have had to be taken which, if the Convention were now applied to Hong Kong, would have to
It is, be reported to the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe. however, one thing to report such measures as they are taken, but quite another, while the emergency persists and a hundred practical tasks call for urgent attention, to review the whole field of legislation, both emergency measures and those enacted in the days before the war or even before this century, in order to determine which of them would have to be reported. Such a task would take far more time than the staff of the Legal Department, below its proper strength and in serious arrears with the legal work of government, could possibly give to it at present, and you will appreciate that failure to report any particular item of deviation from the Convention, however small, could be the subject of powerful propaganda from Moscow and Peking and of renewed attacks from the traditional anti-colonialists in the United Nations.
3.
I appreciate that it will be unfortunate if His Majesty's Government are obliged to make a public statement to the effect that the Convention will not be applied to Hong Kong. On the other hand, in view of the difficulties stated briefly above I would greatly prefer that the Convention should not apply to Hong Kong for the present.
4.
If you agree to this, I propose to ask my legal adivsers to undertake, as soon as conveniently possible after the arrival of additional staff, an examination of the Convention in relation to present legislation, and when this has been done I would request you to apply the Convention to this Colony, subject to your supporting the view I have put forward above that the expression in Article 15(1 "public emergency threatening the life of the nation" covers the present emergency in Hong Kong.
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5.
on the other hand, you consider that on balance it would be disadvantageous for Hong Kong to stand out at this juncture, I YOU WOW el ree to the application of the Convention
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