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RECEIVERY IN REGISTRY
HOUSE
OF
LORDS
C-FICER
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FA
on Taken
The Rt. Hon. The Lord Glenarthur,
Minister of State,
Foreign and Commonwealth,
London.
14th October 1987.
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29 OCT 1987
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Dear Lord Glenarthur,
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Thank you for your letter of 24th August 1987.
I confirm that indeed the issues raised are indeed complex, however they are nevertheless issues, albeit for a small number of people, of fundamental human rights. I bring them to your attention in the expectation that you share the same concern to guarantee equitable rights and protection to any person transferred to Hong Kong on the authority of UK government.
I note your comments on the structure of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) and it's juridical system, I would however like to refer to extract of a study of the Hong Kong agreement completed by The US Library of Congress in December 1986.
One problem has to do with the nature of Article 31, which provides for the establishment of SAR's, and it's relationship to other provisions of the PRC Constitution. According to Article 31:
The system
The state may establish SAR's where necessary. to be instituted in SAR's shall be prescribed by law enacted by the National Peoples Congress in the light of the special conditions.
It does not state that laws enacted by the NPC for a special administrative region can be in conflict with other constitutional provisions. Yet the Joint Declaration, which is to be part of the Basic Law for Hong Kong enacted by the NPC, says that the residents of Hong Kong will enjoy certain rights and freedoms (eg. of movement, of residence, of strike, of raising a family, of choice of occupation that at present are not accorded Chinese citizens in general under the PRC constitution. Moreover, other rights and freedoms ( eg, of press, of speech > that are prescribed by the constituion are definitely not practised in the same way in the PRC as they are in Hong Kong today. Thus the same terms used in the Basic Law for these freedoms would be different in a PRC context, since the final authority of interpretation of the Basic Law rests with the Standing Committee of the NPC. In addition, the rights and freedoms set forth in a future basic law of Hong Kong could be nullified by the