A
United Kingdom in the case
of Gibraltar where the United
Kingdom provided a Constitution whose preamble affirmed that:
"Her Majesty's Government will never enter into arrangements under which the people of Gibraltar would pass under the sovereignty of another State against their freely and democratically expressed wishes."
Similarly, the Constitution of the Falkland Islands, enacted
after the war initiated by Argentina, recognises the rights
of the people of that colony to self-determination. As I
have said, the same right has not been accorded to the people
of Hong Kong. Instead, without proper and effective
consultation with the people, nearly 6 million of them,
citizens of the Commonwealth of Nations and present subjects
of the Queen, are transferred into the control of the
of the PRC
without an act of self-determination by them.
Declaration and the Basic Law exclude, and are a substitute
for, an
act of self-determination. The Bill of Rights
Ordinance, notably, excludes from the re-enactment for Hong
Kong those provisions of the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights which guarantee the
the right to
self-determination.
The Joint
This represented an intolerably paternalistic
abdication of a fundamental obligation imposed on the United
Kingdom by international human rights law. It is the subject
of a mission by the International Commission of Jurists. It
may be expected that the mission's report will be available
to the Governments of the United Kingdom, the PRC and Hong
Kong before too long. Even at this stage, it may not be too
late to ensure that the government of Hong Kong is provided
with the legitimacy of a complete democracy. Unless this is
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