CONFIDENTIAL
C
Bill of Rights should reproduce as far as possible the language of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR), which it is intended to implement.
This is not an approach with which our own Legal Advisers have been entirely happy: their view is that the objective
of implementing the provisions of the ICCPR would be better
achieved by expressing those provisions in language appropriate to a domestic enactment (which by its nature and
intended function is different from that used in an
international treaty). In their view, the resulting text
contains a number of major ambiguities and oddities so it is
difficult to predict how the courts might interpret these provisions. Mr Fifoot's minute of 4 October summaries Legal
Advisers' views. This, and their other comments, have been
brought to the attention of the Governor (he refers to the latest minute in paragraph 11 of his telegram). A few of our Legal Advisers' points have been taken, but Hong Kong
Government are clearly unwilling to change their basic
approach.
4.
The political arguments for the course which the Hong
Kong Government have adopted are related to difficulties
with the Chinese. We know that the Chinese are hostile to
the concept of a Bill of Rights. The strongest card in our
hand is that, in the Joint Declaration and Basic Law, the
Chinese have accepted that the ICCPR will continue to apply
to Hong Kong. By making the Bill of Rights as close as
possible in form and content to the Covenant, Hong Kong
hoped to minimise grounds for Chinese objections.
Chinese Dimension
5. The Governor's report covers fully the Chinese position.
Although they have criticised the Bill on legal grounds,
their hostility is fundamentally political. We continue to
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CONFIDENTIAL