"As to the second, it is given the lie by the lette: written by the Solicitor-General to the Hongkong Bar Association on October 11 last year when he made it clear that the Committee of Review is not in any sense a court of appeal but merely an administrative body (of unknown people) with the function of advising the Colonial Secretary, in whose sole discretion the detention decision remains, In any event it would be a rather hollow right of appeal, since legal represen- tation is entirely at the discretion of the Committee and the detainee need only be told as much about the charge against him as the Colonial Secretary thinks fit.
"Government finally argues that Mr Grey does not know when he is to be released. Since Government admits in the same paragraph that redetention is not only legal but has actually taken place, then the position of the detainees is no different in this respect than that of Mr Grey.
"Government's cry that they have been moderate in their application of these immoderate laws can surely only earn the reply from the Chinese that it is they who have been moderate; we detained 54, they appear to have detained about ten. When we cut the moral ground from under our feet this is the sort of argument we have to resort to,
"Finally, Six, the implication of your leader that by writing my letter to The Times I might have endangered Mr Grey is an unfair way of trying to discredit my point of view and also does scant justice to the Chinese Government, My letter has told them nothing they did not already know.
If you will refer to the English edition of the Ta Kung Pao of November 7 (my letter was written on the 2nd and published on the 11th) you will see that the Communists did not need me to point out the partial inconsistency of the British Government's position."
HONG KONG GOVERNMENT'S REPLY
THE TIMES, LONDON 14th November, 1968
"Mr John Rear (November 11) attempts to argue that the case of Mr Grey, detained in Peking, is comparable to the cases of the 30 or so detainees still in custody in Hongkong, and says that "like Mr Grey, they have simply been held",
"On a point of fact Mr Rear should know that the reasons for Mr Grey's detention, as stated by the Chinese Foreign Ministry on 22nd July, 1967, were that "in view of the Hongkong British authorities' unreasonable persecution of the correspondents of the Hongkong branch of the N.C.N.A. and other patri- otic newsmen, the Chinese Government has decided to limit the freedom of movement of the British Reuters' correspondent in Peking until further notice". Unlike the treatment meted out to Mr Grey, these "newsmen" have all been charged, tried and sentenced in the courts for offences against the law of Hong Kong.
Furthermore, I would like to point out a few dissimi-
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