2600027
17
C.S. 20A (Rev.)
Acting
From the Governor, Hong Kong
CONFIDENTIAL
SAVING DESPATCHCEIVED IN
To the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
REGISTRY No. 51
- 5 NOV 1969
22
No.1195
No.
Repeated to:-
Repeated to:-
Date.
25th October 1969
My Reference
CR 9/6/3231/59
HKK 14/3
No.
Your Reference...
Ө Esat
Your Saving Despatch No. 663 of 25th November, 1968.
This saving follows upon discussions held in London between your advisers and my Attorney General and deals with those aspects of your Saving Despatch on which your advisers wished to be addressed.
2.
It has been urged that it is important (and in accordance with the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights) that judgment and sentence should be announced in public, to refute any suggestion of secret trials. I appreciate the force of this argument and am willing to introduce an amendment to section 123 to this effect.
3.
However, I suggest that a similar amendment is unnecessary to section 122, since this section ensures that adequate publicity can be given to any proceedings, even where the public are excluded under section 122, because the press cannot be required to leave the court under section 122 (as they could under section 123).
4.
1
The prime motive behind section 122 is to protect the courts against well-drilled and carefully instructed mobs. If these are always to be admitted when sentence is passed, trouble may, on occasions arise as readily from this as it would from their admission during a trial. We are not, as you will appreciate, dealing with a public with an innate respect for the courts, which are in the eyes of the communists merely a hostile extension of the executive, to be disrupted and intimidated if possible. I would therefore prefer not to amend section 122 so as to oblige judgment and sentence to be delivered in public; the press will have a right to be present and this would surely be an adequate safeguard.
5.
Section 123(1)(a). I see the force of the objection taken to the phrase "or may be" and agree that this should be deleted.
6.
I am, on economic and security grounds, most reluctant to make the operation of sections 122 and 123 dependent upon an Order of the Governor, whether or not after consultation with the Chief Justice. An order of this nature would be taken as an indication that the Governor considered that an emergency had arisen, or at least that serious disorder was expected, with the damaging consequences to the economy and to public confidence which would follow.
7.
|
I should mention that since the initial criticism of the bill, in September 1968 (which was mainly expatriate inspired and not local criticism) there have been no further attacks on it. There is therefore no urgency about these amendments so far as Hong Kong is concerned nor, I believe, any substantial demand for them here.
CONFIDENTIAL
18....
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.