COPY.
Enclosure No. 7 in Swatow No.27 of June 29, 1927.
sir,
H. M. Consul, Swatow,
to
Commissioner for Foreign Affairs.
74
Swatow, June 27, 1927.
I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of
your letters of the 17th and 24th instant relative to the
illegal arrest and fining of Low Peng Kiah, a British
subject, by the Opium Suppression Bureau, in which you
state that according to the report of the Bureau, Low Peng
Kiah, while on their premises, admitted that he was a
native of Chao An and said that he was prepared to submit
to the fine and to pay over the amount fixed.
Your letter of the 17th instant was received
after I had written mine of the same date.
In reply, I must now inform you that the state-
ments of the Opium Suppression Bureau are entirely false.
Low Peng Kiah did not state that he was a native of Chao
An and that he was willing to pay the fine. On the
contrary, he repeatedly informed his captors that he was
born at Singapore and that he was a British subject.
Further, he was only induced to pay the fine by the brutal
treatment meted out to him while he was in the hands of
the Bureau, as explained to you in my letter of the 11th
instant.
You will hardly venture, I think, to maintain
that the statements of persons of the type of the
Bureau's employees can be called in to rebut the evidence
in the case. Would it not be quite absurd to suppose
that a man, who has for years past been recognized both
by this Consulate and by the local authorities as a
British