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Hong Kong (Ethnic Minorities)
Hong Kong (Ethnic Minorities)
9 JULY 1993
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.-[Mr. Michael Brown.]
2.30 pm
Sir Teddy Taylor (Southend, East): I am grateful for this opportunity to raise with the House and the Minister one relatively small issue relating to the transfer of Hong Kong to Chinese control. While it is a small problem in terms of the numbers of people involved, it is of great humanitarian and constitutional importance.
Like many people in the United Kingdom I have felt somewhat guilty about the transfer of Hong Kong to Chinese control. Every other colony which has moved out of our control has been able to secure freedom, independence and national consciousness, but Hong Kong is the exception because we are transferring it to Chinese control on the basis of an outdated and irrelevant agreement made with the Manchu emperors.
The comparison with little Macau is unusual. Macau is only 20 miles from Hong Kong-less than half the distance from the House to Southend on Sea. The Portuguese, who control Macau, have agreed to transfer control to China by the end of the century, but everyone there is entitled to seek Portuguese citizenship. Some 100,000 passports have already been issued to the 400,000 people there--men, women and children—and another 100,000 passports are on the way.
Due to the iniquities of the Foreign Office and the EC, which appear to haunt us all the time now, a considerable number of those 400,000 delightful people will be entitled to come to settle in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Most of the Macau people have lived there for generations, or at least have proof of having done so. Most of them speak English as that makes commercial sense and most of them speak Portuguese of a sort because they are aware of the rules of admission once the colony is transferred.
I am sure that if the Minister telephones the Foreign Office he will receive a Euro-assurance that the numbers involved are small. However, on the basis of the time that those people have spent living there and their ability to speak Portuguese-actively spoken in Macau-the numbers will become considerable. I cannot hold our delightful Minister of State responsible for the sins of the Foreign Office or Brussels, but I can ask him to bear in mind that loophole when he considers my request on behalf of a tiny group of people, who have the ethnic background of Asians, White Russians and Eurasians, have lived in Hong Kong and had British nationality for generations, and who have paid their taxes and given their obligations to the British Administration. They now seem likely to become stateless people. Their numbers are tiny -they amount to 7,000. But the real number will probably be about 5,000 because the balance will have qualified for citizenship as part of the 50,000 passport scheme. We must consider the facts. First, will those people actually become stateless? The Government have insisted that they are currently British dependent territorial citizens and will be able to seek classification as British nationals overseas. We are told that that will ensure that they have the protection of the British consuls. However, the status of BNO will be
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handed down for only two generations. The great- grandchild of any one of those BNOS will have no nationality, no homeland and no security unless we do something.
Am I right in my belief about statelessness? Everyone else seems to think so. The International Commission of Jurists has determined that the ethnic minorities "will become effectively stateless in 1997”. That is clear and precise.
Article 10 of the 1961 convention, to which I understand we are a party, obliges any state involved in the transfer of territory
"to secure that no person shall become stateless as a result". Will the Chinese sort things out for this small group of people when they take over? Sad to say, there is no sign of that. Chinese laws on nationality are essentially race based and the 5,000 have no right to Chinese citizenship even if they wanted to take it up. The Chinese Government have made their position clear. They have stated that the 5,000 will have to stay in Hong Kong as stateless persons or else seek some sort of special Chinese passports whose status has not been defined. The Chinese policy, stated openly and publicly, has been to advise the 5,000 to appeal to London to grant them United Kingdom passports.
What does the Legislative Council of Hong Kong think? Does it believe that the problem is insignificant? Far from it. It has passed a unanimous resolution appealing to the United Kingdom Government to make a concession. It took the trouble to send a delegation here a fortnight ago to seek help from the Foreign Office and from the friends of justice and humanity to get the problem solved.
Disregarding the democratic representations, what does the Governor think? Unprecedentedly-this says a great deal for him-he took the trouble to make a clear public statement as recently as Thursday 10 June. He stated unambiguously:
"I think that the case has been put not only by the delegation of legislative councillors, but also by me and others --and we will go on putting the case and I hope that we can get some movement on that." Clearly the Governor, as well as LegCo, believes that this is a just cause requiring action.
It seems that everyone at every level accepts that this is a real problem, a grave injustice and a genuine personal crisis for the 5,000 forgotten United Kingdom citizens of Hong Kong. I understand that the Government have made the concession of stating that, should things get rough in Hong Kong after the changeover-which they might- they will look sympathetically at the plight of the 5,000. If that is to be regarded as a guarantee, what on earth would we lose by making the nationality concession? The 5,000 appear to wish to stay in Hong Kong-there is not the slightest evidence that they do not want to. So what difference would it make if we gave them nationality?
As the House of Commons has unfortunately tended to become an area of interest promotion, I should like to emphasise that I have no connection, direct or indirect, by the back door or the front door, with Hong Kong or with any business operating there, or with the 5,000 or any of their industrial or commercial ventures. Indeed, I have been to Hong Kong only once, for a short holiday with my wife. My principal memory is of paying more for a cup of coffee-£2·80—than I have paid anywhere else in the world. I did not enjoy that, the more so since we were joined at breakfast by five of my fellow Members of Parliament who were staying in the same lavish and costly hotel as participants in one of those mass of useless