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LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
No. S. 117.-The following Bill was read a first time at a Meeting of the Council held on the 18th May, 1911 :-
A BILL
ENTITLED
Short title.
Amends Ordinance No 1 of 1472.
An Ordinance to amend the Foreign Offenders
Detention Ordinance, 1872.
BE it enacted by the Governor of Hongkong, with the advice and consent of the Legislative Council thereof, as follows
•
1. This Ordinance may be cited as the Foreign Offend- ers Detention Amendment Ordinance, 1911”.
2. The Foreign Offenders Detention Ordinance, 1872, is hereby amended as follows :---
(a.) in the preamble by the deletion of the words
to their respective countries":
(6.) in section 3 thereof by the deletion of the
words " to his own country ";
(c.) in section 5 thereof by the deletion of the word “and at the end of sub-section (3) and by the repeal of sub-section (4) :
(d) by the deletion of section 6 and by the sub- stitution of the following :-"The Magistrate shall commit the offender to gaol, there to await the order of the Governor."
Objects and Reasons.
Ordinance No. 1 of 1872 permits the Governor to warrant the temporary detention of subjects of Foreign Governments who, having been accused or convicted of crimes committed in China, are brought within the Colony in course of transmission to their own country for trial or punishment. Owing to the growth of consular jurisdic- tion such persons are tried in their Consular Courts in China more often than in their own country and as it is as important to detain prisoners being transmitted East as it is to detain prisoners being transmitted West the amend- ments are made in the preamble and in section 3 of the principal Ordinance.
Moreover as the principal Ordinance is not an extradi- tion Ordinance but an Ordinance which authorises the detention of prisoners already in lawful custody when, in course of transmission, they are brought to the Colony, sub-section (4) of section 5 which is based on extradition precedents seems unnecessary and Ilis Honour the Chief Justice who is now engaged in the revision of the Ordin- ances has advised its repeal.
The amendment to section 6 is consequential on the amendment to section 5.
C. G. ALABASTER,
Attorney General,