1
I
HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
10 November 1993
82
香港立法局
一九九三年十一月十日
82
MR SIMON IP: Mr President, there was a time when a passport meant something. It meant that you were entitled to live in the country which issued it, that that country would come to your aid if you should find yourself in trouble abroad. It also meant that you belonged somewhere and that you had a nationality.
But that was then, and this is now. Now, a passport seems to be no more than a travel document. It grants a nationality that cannot be enjoyed. For to enjoy the benefits of belonging to a nation, one must be able to enjoy the rights and protections given under that nation's laws. But those obtaining BN(O) and BOC passports will find that their nationality is a mere shadow of what it was formerly. And that shadow is none other than that left by the setting of the sun on Britain's last important colonial outpost. And after the sun sets and we wake up the next morning in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, what will it mean to be a British national who carries the tag "overseas" on his passport?
We might find the answer to this question by first asking another one. If for some reason a BN(O) passport holder were no longer welcome in Hong Kong after 1997, where would he or she go? It is considered a violation of international law for a state to refuse admission to its own nationals who are not welcome by the state which is hosting them. Britain would, thus, be violating the territorial supremacy of China by refusing to grant entry to British nationals who are stripped of their right of abode in the SAR. But a BN(O) passport holder will be given no right of abode in the United Kingdom and no diplomatic protection in the SAR.
I submit that the nationality offered by Britain to the majority of the citizens of Hong Kong does not truly fulfill her obligations under the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. What has been created, rather, is a paradoxical category of people whom we might call "stateless nationals", to whom Britain cannot offer any of the rights which nationality ought to confer.
To prevent this purely formal nationality from being utterly illusive, there is one assurance Britain must offer an assurance given by the modern concept of the passport. According to that concept, the issuing country agrees to accept the bearer if he is repatriated by another state. So, if Chinese authorities revoke a BNO or a BOC's right of abode in the SAR, Britain ought to grant him entry to the United Kingdom.