102
HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
18 November 1992
香港立法局
一九九二年十一月十八日
102
As prominent academic, Mr Johannes CHAN, has commented, statelessness occurs when two essential attributes of nationality are absent: These are the availability of protection by, and the right of admission to, the State of which a person is a national. These British overseas passports, namely the BNO and BOC passports, neither provide for the right of abode in the United Kingdom nor for full consular protection. They are really no more than travel documents, as the Chinese Government has made clear in the Memorandum to the Joint Declaration. So is it right to allow the ethnic minorities to be armed with mere travel documents in the years to come, knowing full well that even those travel documents would lapse after two generations?
The British Government's reasons for refusing to grant ethnic minorities full British passports are scarcely credible. They maintain that the provisions in the Joint Declaration, as implemented through the granting of various forms of British overseas passports, would be adequate to cater for their needs. This patently has failed to allay the continuing anxiety felt by the ethnic minorities that they will become stateless after 1997.
Another problem is that for some of them who have lived in Hong Kong for most their lives, the right of abode in Hong Kong is still an uncertain prospect. The right of abode of non-Chinese nationals after 1997 is clearly prescribed in both the Joint Declaration and Article 24 of the Basic Law. But despite that, the Chinese and British Governments are still unable to resolve how that right can be secured in our laws and how the conditions laid down in the Basic Law can be fulfilled.
The British Government has said that it will consider sympathetically the case for admission into the United Kingdom those people who come under pressure to leave Hong Kong. But this "guarantee", if it can be so called, is neither adequate nor realistic. People who are anxious about their future and many of the ethnic minorities are indeed so will simply not wait until the fateful day when they are compelled to leave. They may simply pack their bags and go now before they become stateless. This will be a severe loss to Hong Kong, for no one can doubt the great contributions which they make to Hong Kong's success as an international centre of commerce and trade, not to mention the notable achievements many of them and their forefathers have made in the cause of philanthropy.