TNAG-0404-FCO40-450-Review-of-the-death-sentence-in-Hong-Kong-1973 — Page 3

"

SECRET AND PERSONAL

Foreign and Commonwealth Office London SW1

Sir Murray MacLehose KCMG MBE

HONG KONG

Telephone 01-

LAST

REF.

(231A)

NEXT

Dear Ramay,

REF.

Your reference

Our reference

Date

file

(260)

PIA or Sile

20 December 1973

DEATH SENTENCES

1.

I have shown it

Thank you for your letter of 22 November. and the note for ExCo to Teddy Youde and Duncan Watson but to no-one else.

2.

Lam Po is now out of the way, and also, hopefully, Leung Ping-fat. I have sent the Chan Hon-tong papers to the Home Office for their comments and have just got the Liù Chu papers. On Chan Hon-tong the main problem seems to be the rather weak chain of evidence. But this of course will already be clear to your people.

3.

We were in some doubt before drafting the Secretary of State's message on Leung Ping-fat lest we might be interfering unwarrantably with your prerogative. But I have taken the line that you want to be informed of under-currents here and that not to tell you how Ministers might well react could well lead us into the same sort of problems as with Tsoi. I hope this is right?

It

4.

As for your scenario for the future, you may well be right that there is no long-term solution other than the abolition of the death sentence. But if we are to work for this it could logically mean selecting a case that was something less than the worst one. would undoubtedly be easier to get Ministers here to abolish the death sentence in the context of a bad decision in Hong Kong. Presumably Executive Council would also be more ready to accept abolition if they, or some of them, had a bad conscience about a doubtful decision. But this would mean acting earlier than is absolutely inevitable. And this, as the Secretary of State made clear in his message, he would be most unwilling to agree to. I fear there is no alternative but to go on as we are until the inescapable crunch case arrives. I would not, as I read things here, rule out the possibility that Ministers would then decide to support you and stick to that decision. This presumably means that we cannot "work for" the

LAST PAPER

SECRET AND PERSONAL

/abolition