Registry
SECRET
No.
HKK 1/12
DRAFT
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION
To:-
Top Secret.
Secret.
Confidential.
Mr. Wilford
Type 1+5
From
SSA
30
J. A. L. Morgan
Telephone No. & Ext.
NOTHING TO BE WRITTEN IN THIS MARGIN
inder
Restricted.
Unclassified.
PRIVACY MARKING
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4 May
Department
Confrontation Pusines - Hay Kang
8/5
In your report on your visit to East Asia of
you recommended that we should continue to
look closely at the possibility of hastening the
release of confrontation prisoners in Hong Kong.
Subsequently you asked me whether the publication of
the 1970 Hong Kong Public Order (Amendment) Ordinance
was relevant to this problem.
2. A report in the South China Morning Post of
20 February commenting on the Ordinance suggested that
as amended it gave Communist prisoners convicted of
serious offences the possibility of appeal and that
people "erroneously" arrested during confrontation
would have their sentences reviewed.
This was
certainly not/the intention of the Ordinance, which
is designed to clarify certain appeals procedures and
to give additional protection to the public against
the possibility of arrest from innocent involvement
in circumstances which constituted an offence under
the original Ordinance. Secret sources have now
reported that as a result of this misleading article
local Communists are under the misapprehension that
the Ordinance provides grounds for a further review
of the sentences of prisoners possibly leading to
their early release.
3.
As regards our thinking on possible ways of
obtaining the premature release of some of the
SECRET
/confrontation
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