RESTRICTED
5. Your letter raises the question of whether China can be trusted to abide by the provisions of any Hong Kong/US extradition agreement. In the Joint Declaration, China has undertaken binding legal obligations in relation to the position and status of Hong Kong after China resumes the exercise of sovereignty. Those obligations provide for a high degree of autonomy and in particular for a continuation of the present judicial and legal system of Hong Kong. They also provide that international agreements to which the PRC is not a party but which are implemented in Hong Kong may remain implemented in the HKSAR. The British Government have no reason to believe that the PRC will not abide by the Joint Declaration. Indeed the Joint Declaration has been further strengthened by the promulgation of the Basic Law in April 1990, Articles 81, 85, 87 and 153 of which are particularly relevant.
6.
You may be interested to know that Lorrain Osman, whom Hong Kong are seeking to extradite from the UK on charges of fraud and conspiracy to defraud, applied to the European Commission of Human Rights on the grounds that if extradited and if his sentence extended beyond 1997, he might be subjected to further prosecution or punishment under the Chinese Criminal Code. This would seem to be related to the concerns expressed by the State Department. The Commission rejected the application on 13 March 1989. I attach a copy of their findings, which you may pass to the State Department. There may well be further developments in the case of Osman who has recently launched a fifth habeus corpus application, one of the grounds of which is his fear that he would receive adverse treatment after 1997 from the Chinese authorities. We shall keep you informed.
Yours
wer
Pamela
PA Major (Ms)
Hong Kong Department
RIDAJR