BY FAX
DIEU
Foreign & Commonwealth
Office
FILE
REGISTERED?
38
18 June 1991
RF Hoare Esq
PS/GH
Hong Kong
fror Richard.
.
HKC 241/2
19 JUN 1991
22
London SWIA 2AH
Telephone: 071-
Faxed on 1916.
fe for 2016.
VISIT TO HONG KONG BY INTERNATIONAL/COMMISSION OF JURISTS
1.
As you may recall (FCO telno 913), Alan Paul was to have seen Sir William Goodhart before his departure. In Alan's absence in Tokyo, Jill Barrett, Pamela Major and I briefed Sir William on 17 June. The Governor and others who will be seeing members of the mission, may find it useful to have an outline of Sir William's concerns. (The mission's terms of reference are in FCO telno 749.)
2.
On self-determination for Hong Kong, Sir William seemed a bit sceptical about our arguments that this was a political non-starter. He asked in particular whether there had ever been a debate in Parliament on self-determination, whether the Government had thought of holding a referendum on the Joint Declaration and whether we had thoroughly studied the viability of the non-leased parts of Hong Kong remaining British or acquiring some other status when the lease on the rest of the territory expired. We answered his points and gave him a copy of the report of the Assessment Office and Independent Monitoring Team (which he was aware of but had not seen before). But no doubt this will be a theme in the mission's visit and report.
3. On the Basic Law, Sir William flagged concerns on Articles 14 and 16 (physical intervention by the CPG); 17 and 160 (power of the Standing Committee to invalidate laws); 23 (subversion); 39 (human rights); 158 and 159 (interpretation and amendment) and on the "democratic deficit" in arrangements for selection of the Chief Executive and election of the Legislature. We provided what reassurance we could and also put him right on his misapprehension that the Basic Law did not give as good a guarantee of the right to leave Hong Kong as the Joint Declaration (he had overlooked Basic Law Article 31).
4. On Article 39, Sir William showed the same interest as the Human Rights Committee in whether and how China would inherit reporting obligations under the ICCPR. We explained that we started from the assumption that China had committed herself in the Joint Declaration to taking on all the
MUKANZ
TG