THE NATIONAL COUNCIL Telephone: SLOANE 5279
FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES
FOR
Chairman: L. C. WHITE
Hon. Treasurer:
REGINALD BRIDGEMAN
C.M.G., M.V.O.
IJA, KING'S ROAD, SLOANE SQUARE, LONDON,
IMPORTANT
In your reply, please quote:
EAA/RB/JB/HK
RECEIVED
PRIVATE OFFICE
- 9 JUL WA9
ir
S.W.3
General Secretary:
MISS ELIZABETH A. ALLEN
To the Right Honourable Arthur Creech Jones, M.P.,
Secretary of State for the Colonies,
Colonial Office,
Downing Street, S.W.1.
7th July, 1949.
58
Not
HONG KONG
The National Council for Civil Liberties understands that on May 25th last, the Hong Kong Legislative Council passed an Ordinance by which a Registration Scheme was brought into force in the Crown Colony.
The N.C.C.L. further understands that Chinese feeling has been disturbed by the character of this Ordinance and that various demo- cratic organisations in China have made a joint protest against it on the ground that it deprives the Chinese in Hong Kong, who consti- tute about 99% of the Colony's population of 2,000,000, of their democratic rights.
The record of Hong Kong as a place of asylum for political refugees of widely differing ideological outlook is an honourable
one.
Inasmuch as the Ordinance, so the N.C.C. L. understands, provides that all organisations in Hong Kong must be registered and that where organi sati ons exist outside Hong Kong their individual members in miles they Hong Kong will be regarded as an organisation, and that the police are empowered to enter premises considered to be occupied by the organisa- tions or their members to conduct researches and even to make arrests, the N.C.C.L. will be very grateful to be informed of the reason for the introduction of this legislative measure.
Yours faithfully,
छ
Zutaten
a. Olen.
General Secretary.