em a 'clear message... migrate elsewhere to get yourself a real passport. However, many in the minority communities do not have the option of escape: people like a widowed mother of Persian descent and her two daughters, or disillusioned Eurasian clerks whose mothers were abandoned by their British fathers and who now feel abandoned by Britain. One Goan Christian wrote: 'Many are too pessimistic and in a state of stunned apathy to write and I hope you will keep this in mind'. The feelings of many such people were summed up in a letter from one of them:
"Other governments (such as that of India) have held out lifelines to those of its nationals wishing to depart Hong Kong in 1997; that of Britain has slammed the door in the faces of its loyal subjects. Much as I despise the categorising of the people of Hong Kong in this way, where once we looked upon ourselves simply as British subjects belonging to a British Crown Colony called Hong Kong, at least those who can claim to be ethnically Chinese are guaranteed papers, an identity, after 1997. The rest of us—and we do not number more than a few thousand whose families have lived and worked here for generations, will fall into a grey area, belonging nowhere and merely tolerated in the one place we considered our home. We will have no avenue of escape, because the country to which we gave our allegiance is not prepared to recognise us or accord us any rights, thus condemning us to a life of spiritual imprisonment, within the bounds of a territory formerly our home, under a political system we have been taught to consider alien. And what heinous crime deserves such punishment? That of being born and raised in a British Crown Colony, to families who considered themselves British and who educated us accordingly. Is this British justice?"13
A great deal has been made, in debates, statements and in the draft Order in Council, of the British government's assurances that no-one will be left stateless as a result of the Agreement and that Britain is honouring obligations under the International Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. In one sense it is true. All British nationals will have a status: BDTCs with British passports by 1997 will become BN(O)s; other BDTCs who would otherwise be stateless will become British Overseas citizens (BOC)s; children born to non- Chinese BN(O)s after 1997 (who will not acquire Chinese nationality at birth because they are not ethnically Chinese) will also become British Overseas citizens; third generation children who would otherwise be stateless will be able to register as British Overseas citizens.
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