TNAG-2118-FCO40-3024-Future-of-Hong-Kong-general-1990 — Page 136

resenting the Hong Kong Report to the Autumn Assembly of the British Council of Churches)

Vice President

The report on pages 8-14 of the Assembly Booklet No 1, which sets out an understanding of the Hong Kong situation, has been seen in draft form by a number of BCC Committees and Divisional Boards, as well as by the Executive Committee, and it comes to the Assembly with a substantial degree of support. Pages 15-28 provide background material.

If the report is received, and the Resolutions on pages 12 and 13 of the Agenda are adopted, I hope it will not be made to seem that we are doing the people of Hong Kong a favour. I am much more inclined to the view being expressed by sections of the student community in Hong Kong, that many of Hong Kong's current problems are exacerbated by the style of colonial rule Britain has exercised over the territory for the past 100 years. There is no reasonable excuse for the present low level of democratic processes in Hong Kong, nor for the lack of concern which allowed our Government without protest to abrogate its constitutional and moral obligations to the people of Hong Kong. We have neither cause nor occasion for self congratulation, and I am sure the Assembly does not approach the question with any such attitude.

Neither is the Assembly being invited to meddle in Hong Kong affairs, matters on which we have no mandate. Hong Kong is on our Agenda because christian partners and churches in Hong Kong have asked us to act in solidarity with them as they put their case for justice and fair treatment. What we are invited to, as I see it, is truly an Act in Faithfulness.

I have recently been away in Bangladesh, and so I am not too confident that I have been able to catch up fully with UK press comment on Hong Kong, but one thing that has surprised me is that no one seems to be drawing the parallels between what is happening in Eastern Europe and the issues confronting the people of Hong Kong.

For example, in the Bangladesh press the Danish Foreign Minister, Ellermann Jansen, was reported as saying that EEC economic help to eastern Europe could only be "in return for a verified return to democracy, respect for human rights, and the calling everywhere of free and secret elections",

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Well, I think the people of Hong Kong would settle for that, but at the moment there is very little expectation that their hopes will be realised, and instead they are confronted with the strong probability that they will be simply handed over to a situation in which their rights and freedoms will be even further diminished, and that this will be accomplished with the connivance of the British Government and the British Parliament, the only authorities with the constitutional responsibility for ensuring a different future.