XN000022-1996-07-04 — Page 14

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The President: Mr Tang, short follow-up please.

Mr Henry Tang: Yes it will be a very short follow-up. If I may make a suggestion Governor that actually the Civil Service Branch does not strip out the colour blindness away from the statistics because I don't want to go into these micro arguments about which job really requires full colour awareness or which job you can get away with some degree of colour blindness. So that this way the figures will be even more esoteric and difficult to decipher in the future.

Governor: I think what we should do is to give an aggregate figure as we do today, but then give the doubting Thomas' the other figure as well so that people don't simply think that we're, as it were, employing people with colour blindness as though they had greater disabilities than they do.

Mr Cheng Ka-fu (in Chinese): Mr Governor, I would like to ask you a question about the ICCPR. We all understand that the British Government firmly opposes the establishment of a Provisional Legislature, even to this day. For the United Front Against the Provisional Legislature, we encountered some difficulties and problems and you are aware of it. For some journalists, they have to sign some letters of repentance and in the letters of repentance they have to acknowledge that the United Front was an illegal organisation before they were released.

If the United Front is going to be considered an illegal organisation after 1997, for the ICCPR I understand that you are going to present a report before 1997 but the Chinese Government has refused to do so after 1997, so I would like to know, in your last report would you include the experience that we had on Monday, in the concluding report and reflect it fully to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights so that for the Democrats, after July 1, 1997, we will still enjoy our civil liberties?

Governor: First of all can I say that I can't conceive of how the organisation to which the honourable gentleman belongs could be regarded as an illegal organisation either before or after 1997. I can't conceive of how that could be the case if the Bill of Rights and the International Covenants were still being applied to Hong Kong. Hong Kong, if that were to happen, would not only be a much less agreeable place in which to live, it would be a much less successful place and a much less prosperous place in which to live, because that sort of Hong Kong would not attract international investment like today's Hong Kong does. So I don't believe that could conceivably be on anybody's agenda and I am sorry that the events of Monday give the impressior that it might be on the agenda.