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"about with the most careful safeguards for the rights - of the individual.
Da...
"Courageously, the Secretary of the Bar Association, Henry Litton, has refused to mince his words and aptly referred to the "totalitarian powers" of the Government and its fond hope "that bland assurances
could be a substitute for the rule of law". While Henry Litton, in the best traditions of the legal profession, has demonstrated that it has not forgotten its duty to defend the community against the administration's attempts to whittle down the rights of the citizen, the Government may wriggle free because the controversy has centred on the detainees. In many ways, this power is the least objectionable of the Emergency Regulations, as the need for detention without trial was so apparent last year. More important is the disgraceful way in which the administration with the full consent of the British Government has placed on the statute book the Public Order Ordinance. This hasty and ill-conceived law is framed on the novel principle that all actions are criminal unless the accused can prove his innocence.
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"Governments must have the right to invoke emergency · powers, but those assumed by the Hongkong administration under the Public Order Ordinance are totally unaccept- able in a society which has any pretensions to be termed free, Now that the confrontation with the communists is over, the Hongkong Government can no longer afford to continue to suspend under emergency legislation the operation of those basic freedoms which, in the past, have made the colonial adminis- tration stand out like a beacon of liberalism by contrast with most other Asian countries,"
WHO ARE THOSE ARRESTED?
"Red Sun Over Stanley" by Andrew Kwok-Nag Li
in the Far Eastern Economic Review, 25 July, 1968
"Stanley is a microcosm of the forces locked in conflict in Hongkong today. Along Stanley Beach Road stand the luxury villas of "high society". Further along are the army barracks, their presence symbolic of the insecurity rather than the safety of Hongkong. Lower down, clusters Stanley village, a reminder of the traditional Chinese way of life. Nearby are the Seamen's School and St Stephen's Boys School, both reputable institutions serving Hongkong's youth; they represent the enormous and perhaps explosive problem of the future. Then away in a corner, the well-known Stanley prison looms; its cells contain prisoners convicted of drug offences and theft; these prisoners form the dregs and possibly the result of the social and economic structure that is Hongkong. But imprisoned in Stanley is another group - prisoners convicted of offences during last year's confrontation with the communists on charges of riot, unlawful assembly, possession of explosives, putting up inflammatory posters.
"Who are these people? What is their social background? How "hard-core" are they as communists? Are they willing to die for Chairman Mao? They have vowed to continue the struggle but with what tactics? What is their view of Hongkong? What dissatisfies them about Hongkong?
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