TNAG-0005-FCO40-41-Departmental-briefs-about-Hong-Kong-1968 — Page 142

CONFIDENTIAL

monthly visits which all convicted prisoners in

Hong Kong are eligible to receive under prison regulations.

There seems little hope at present that any further

access to Mr. Grey will be secured without the

arranging of further "special visits" for these

prisoners.

44.

The question of these communist prisoners in Hong

Kong is probably a matter about which the Chinese

Peoples' Government currently feel more strongly than

any other in their relations with Hong Kong. It is a

subject to which they revert at the slightest opportunity

and there seems little hope at present that Mr. Grey

will be released so long as those prisoners (at any

rate the most important of them, if not all of them)

remain in prison, On the other hand, it is clearly out of

the question for the Hong Kong authorities to agree to their

premature release (except under conditions which would be

tantamount to their deportation to Chine and which we know

to be unacceptable to the Chinese Peoples' Government) since

for them to do so would undoubtedly have repercussions

which might well affect public confidence in Hong Kong.

Visits of United States Warships

5. A visit to the Colony by the United States nuclear-

powered aircraft carrier "Enterprise" on 24 May gave rise

to the delivery on 27 May of a protest note to the

British Chargé d'affaires in Peking by a Vice Foreign

Minister of the Chinese Peoples' Government. The note

CONFIDENTIAL

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