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not to go to a particular cinema and watch a particular political film and most people believe the political films will not attract
a large audience. Is it therefore conceivable that the exhibition
of one or more political films will really bring about instability in Hong Kong ?
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Two nights ago, more than ten, members of this Council saw two films at the private cinema of Sir Run Run Shaw.
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matter of fact, all the non-Government members of this Council
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had been invited. The films were entitled, "Coldest Winter in
10 Peking" and "If I were for real." Both were produced in Taiwan
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and both used life within the PRC as their setting. These two
12 films were shown because I had been told by the Chief Censor
that of all the eleven political films banned out of consideration of China, these were considered to be the worst,, e. they deserved banning more than any other film. Having seen them, I cannot
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understand why they have been banned. I do not believe that any of us leaving the Shaw Studio bore any feeling of animosity 18 towards the PRC, the Chinese Communist Party or the people of China.
19 Sir, it is a great pity that the people of Hong Kong are unable
to see these films. I completely fail to see how each of these two films can be said to damage the good relations with the PRC. Indeed, it may be thought by the people of Hong Kong, rightly or wrongly, that it is the PRC Government which does not wish them
to see these films.
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And it would put China in an unfavourable light with the people of Hong Kong. And during this transitional period our administration must not second guess China and ban a film merely because it thinks that China would be embarrassed by its exhibition in Hong Kong.
The administration sought to justify this provision by relying on a legal opinion given by the Legal Adviser of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the most relevant part of which I have already read. I must however sound a word of warning
United Kingdom
here because the track record of the Government itself before
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the European Court of Human Rights is not very reassuring, in that since 1967 of a total of 27 cases submitted to the European
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