TNAG-2185-FCO40-3122-Ethnic-minorities-in-Hong-Kong-1990 — Page 67

Dear John,

ако

41

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

HKD 3401

RECEIVED IN REGISTRY

10 JUL 1990

London SW1A 2AH

5 July 1990

DESK INDEX

REGISTRY

PA

Action Taken

See

$4

Thank you for your letter of 15 June enclosing one from Mr Eric Ho, President of the Welfare Leaque on behalf of the Eurasian community in Hong Kong.

Mr Ho has written to Members of both Houses of Parliament setting out the case for amending the British Nationality (Hong Kong) Bill to make special provision for the Eurasian community in the territory. He argues that Eurasians may be at risk when sovereignty over the territory reverts to the People's Republic of China in 1997, because of their antecedence. For this reason, Mr Ho asks that those Eurasians who claim to be the direct descendants of Britons should be registrable as British citizens.

Ministers have thought carefully about the position of the Eurasian Community. If any Eurasians are not to be regarded as "Chinese" after 1997, the same safeguards available to the other members of the non-Chinese ethnic minorities in Hong Kong would also apply to them. The non-Chinese ethnic minorities' right of abode in the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong is explicitly protected in the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law. In addition, the Government have already given the ethnic minorities a further assurance by providing subsequent children and grandchildren of those who are British Dependent Territory citizens prior to 1 July 1997, with British Overseas citizenship if they would otherwise be stateless.

The Government have on many occasions given an assurance that if any solely British national, with no claim to Chinese nationality, came under severe pressure to leave Hong Kong, the Government of the day would consider with considerable and particular sympathy their case for admission to the UK. That assurance has been repeated on several occasions during Parliament's consideration of the Bill.

For these reasons, we do not think it necessary to make special provision in the Bill of the kind proposed by Mr Ho. Members of the Eurasian community who meet the eligibility criteria will of course be able to apply for British citizenship under the Bill in the same way as other people resident in Hong Kong. The position of