208
The following Leader appeared in "THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN "
the same day as the preceding letter.
A PLEDGE UNHONOURED.
on
Seven years ago Mr. Churchill, then Secretary for the Colonies, gave an assurance in Parliament that the Chinese system of child-slavery known as Mui Tsai, which had long been a dishonourable scar upon British rule in the Far East, would within a year be abolished in the Crown colony of Hong Kong. To-day, according to the evidence quoted in the letter which we print from Mr. J. H. Harris, the evil, so far from being ended, has actually spread. The Anti-Mui Tsai Society in Hong Kong, at a recent meeting, put the number of children now held in bondage at not less than ten thousand, and quoted from a case in the courts the sum of 150 dollars as the current price paid for a child. It would appear, therefore, that the Ordinance of 1922 is a dead letter, that the assurance which was given in response to agitation in this country seven years ago has never been honoured, and that we are in the invidious position of having put our signature to the League of Nations Slavery Convention while an unmistakable breach of it occurs unchecked under our rule. It is fifty years since Mui Tsai was first pro- nounced by the Chief Justice of Hong Kong to be repugnant to British law, though nothing was then done to end it. It is an old-established system in China by which girl children, usually between the ages of four and fourteen, are sold through agents either for domestic service or openly for pur- poses of prostitution. The form of contract between parent and purchaser includes such ominous clauses as "to be dis- posed of as the payer thinks fit," and "no inquiry as to whereabouts or in the event of death is permissible.” Attempts to represent Mui Tsai as a harmless form of adoption and the production of evidence that in some cases the child that is bought is kindly treated do not conceal the fact that the system is a form of bondage that disposes of helpless human beings like animals and condemns them to domestic slavery if not to physical and moral ruin. Mr. Churchill spoke in 1922 of "the difficulty of altering estab- lished custom at a moment's notice." But for the continu- ance of the system seven years later there can be no shadow of excuse, and we trust the Colonial Office will be quick to take the action that the facts now revealed demand.
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.