256
(20464/10).
FGREIGH
OFFICE
"appears with witnesses in a Chinese Court
-
the mere
"fact that a British official appears will lead the
*Chinese Magistrate to believe that a conviction is
*being pressed for in all these cases the Hongkong
"Government will be directly instrumental in procuring
"the infliction of severe physical torture.*
The practice of torture, Sir John Jordan remarks,
no doubt still largely prevails in China, but the
existence of an Imperial Decree abolishing it places
His Majesty's Government in a strong position in deal-
ing with cases such as this. If Mr. Ross was con-
vinced, as he appears to have been, that Liang Tou
was going to be subjected to torture in order to ex-
tort a confession which would have warranted his being
convicted of murder in the first degree, his (Mr.
Ross's) obvious course would have been to impress upon
the Magistrate that torture, having been abolished by
Imperial Decree, was no longer legal in China, and
that any resort to it would in these circumstances
elicit a strong protest from His Majesty's Government.
The