HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
18 November 1992
101
香港立法局
一九九二年十一月十八日
101
Hong Kong to the United Kingdom after 1997; it mentions nothing about full citizenship or right of abode. As such, the amendment is a far cry from what this Council was saying only three years ago.
I see no reason for this Council to back down from our entirely right. and reasonable position of 1989. I see even less reason to back down from our position only in relation to the non-Chinese British citizens in Hong Kong as this amendment seeks to do. For this reason, the leaders of the Indian Resources Group, which has spearheaded the present campaign, have urged me to stand firm in support of full citizenship and vote against Mr ARCULLI's amendment. The UDHK, therefore, will accede to their request by supporting the original motion and opposing the amendment.
MR SIMON IP: Mr Deputy President, the subject of this debate is nothing new. In fact, the issue arose with the signing of the Joint Declaration back in 1984 and was debated fully in this Council in 1985. At that time, Honourable Members of this Council unanimously supported the granting of full British citizenship to Hong Kong's ethnic minorities. The support for that resolution was so strong that the former Governor, Lord MacLEHOSE, was later to say that he could not recall an occasion on which there had been such force and unanimity behind a request of the Legislative Council to the British Government. So it is a disgrace that no satisfactory solution has been devised by the British Government throughout these years.
The problem facing the ethnic minorities in Hong Kong is very simple. They will become stateless after 1997 despite the second class British passports that will be granted to them and to other Hong Kong people who fail to obtain a full British passport under the British Nationality Scheme. They cannot say with conviction that there is any place to which they truly belong. Those so-called British passports, of course, do not allow for the right of abode in England. Neither do they guarantee the right of abode in Hong Kong.
Also these passports confer very few of the rights and privileges normally associated with citizenship. The Memorandum to the Joint Declaration states that consular protection would not be available in Hong Kong or China. The right to protection is only effective in third countries. So what good are passports to these ethnic minorities, who unlike their Chinese counterparts, will not automatically be Chinese nationals after 1997?
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