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incarcerated with adults under certain conditions involves a risk that the juveniles will be mistreated by the adult prisoners. Amnesty International recommends removing those reservations from the Draft Bill of Rights.
Further, Article 9, and Clauses 11 and 12 of the Reservations section in Part III, leave open the possibility that aliens could be arbitrarily expelled from Hong Kong. These provisions provide inadequate safeguards to ensure protection against refoulement of asylum-seekers who are at risk of imprisonment as prisoners of conscience, "disappearance", torture or execution, and who wish to seek protection in Hong Kong.
Amnesty International opposes the forcible return of any person to a country where he or she may reasonably be expected to be imprisoned as a prisoner of conscience, or to be subjected to torture, "disappearance", execution.
or
In order to protect the fundamental rights of asylum-seekers, attention should be paid to ensuring that the Bill of Rights complies fully with the internationally-recognized principle of non-refoulement, as set out in provisions of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees:
"No Contracting State shall expel or return ('refouler') a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion."
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It should also be ensured that the Bill of Rights does not improperly discriminate against aliens and asylum-seekers in terms of guaranteeing their fundamental human rights. The United Nations Human Rights Committee, in its authoritative General Comment on the position of aliens under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, emphasized that "the general rule is that each one of the rights of the Covenant must be guaranteed without discrimination between citizens and aliens".
In this connection, Amnesty International is concerned that Clause 11 of the Reservations section, in stating that "the Bill of Rights is subject to the provisions of such [immigration control] legislation as regards persons not at the time having the right under the law of Hong Kong to enter and remain in Hong Kong", may leave open the possibility for subsequently enacted legislation to exclude from the protection of the Bill of Rights asylum-seekers who are present in Hong Kong without official authorization. Amnesty International considers it essential that the Bill of Rights guarantees protection against arbitrary expulsion to all aliens in Hong Kong, whether or not they are present in the territory with official authorization, and, in particular, that there must be some means of ensuring that subsequent enactments do not infringe the fundamental rights of asylum-seekers.
Amnesty International recognizes that a government is entitled to regulate immigration into its territory. However, Amnesty International would be concerned if immigration controls referred to in Reservations Clause 11 were to obstruct asylum-seekers from seeking that government's protection from the risk of being imprisoned as prisoners of conscience, of being tortured, of "disappearance" or of execution. Immigration controls which obstruct asylum-seekers in this way undermine the international
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