127
Cypher/OTP
DIPLOMATIC
FROM NANKING TO FOREIGN OFFICE.
Sir R. Stevenson, No.149
9th February, 1948.
Repeated to Hong Kong,
IMMEDIATE.
D: 7.6 p.m. 9th February, 1948
R: 7.36 p.m. 9th February, 1948.
Addressed to Foreign Office telegram No.149, 9th February, 1948. Repeated to Hong Kong.
LIGHT.
129
Your telegram No.115:
Kowloon.
I put the proposal to Minister for Foreign Affairs today and requested him to bring it before his colleagues in the Cabinet.
2.
I asked him what his own reaction was. In reply he said he favours not only the idea of a Garden of Remembrance but as I expected considered that the care and maintenance of the Garden should be entrusted to the Chinese Government who would seek from the Municipal Authorities of Kowloon any necessary public services including the Police; such services to be provided by those authorities at cost...
5. He went on to raise the question of the two men under arrest and urged that when agreement had been reached between His Majesty's Government and the Chinese Government they should be released by the Government of Hong Kong as an act of grace.
He
4. Minister for Foreign Affairs asked me to seek your reaction urgently on both these points so that he could inform his colleague in the Cabinet. was moreover faced with a meeting on February 13th of the People's Political Council. At a similar meeting on February 6th he had refused despite strong pressure to make any statement on the Kowloon issue and he would very much like to be able to say something this time. He hoped therefore that you would be able to let him know within the next few days your views regarding the two points mentioned above.
5. I reminded the Minister for Foreign Affairs that the maintenance of order in the Colony was a point of principle on which His Majesty's Government could not in any circumstances yield. The two men had incited the crowd to resist the Police and to refuse the alternative accommodation offered, and they richly deserved their very moderate sentence. Minister for Foreign Affairs argued that they were acting inside the old walled city in defence of what they believed to be China's rights, and that if they were guilty the Chinese Government who had never abandoned their claim on the subject of jurisdiction were also guilty. He reiterated however that he urged their release not as a matter of right but as an act of grace.
/6.