TNAG-0554-FCO40-649-Review-of-death-sentence-in-Hong-Kong-1975 — Page 7

M.P. letter.

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Registry

No. KŎ HKK 14/4

DRAFT TO M.P.

Type 1 +

To:

From

Unclassified

Ben Ford Esq MP

House of Commons

London SW1

Lord Goronwy-Roberts

Telephone No, & Ext.

Department

Consular

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Enclosures:

Copy sent to Governor,

Hong Kong

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You wrote to Jim Callaghan on 11 June enclosing a letter you had received from Mr YW Fong of Duke Wellington House (9th Floor), No. 12-24 Wellington Street, Hong Kong about capital punishment in the Colony As you may know, Mr Fong wrote to us direct on the same matter in June last year.

I had further discussions with the Governor on this question when he was in London in April. However, there is little I can add to what I told you in my letter of 26 July 1974. Both Jim and I are fully aware

of the strength of feeling in Hong Kong but, equally, we still believe that, if he had to defend an execution in Hong Kong in the House on a free vote, he would not get a majority.

We must continue to hope that the people of Hong Kong may in due course come to accept, as other civilised countries have done, that the presence or absence of the death penalty, in practice, makes little difference to the problem of serious crime. No-one would deny that crime is a very serious problem in Hong Kong, as it is in many other densely populated parts of the world. But the increase in the crime rate in Hong Kong during the past ten years has by no means been limited to cases of homicide and has in fact been even

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7084 D.073570 4M 4/74 Cr.P.C. Gp.839/3