TNAG-2323-FCO40-3367-Hong-Kong-Bill-of-Rights-Vietnamese-boat-people-1991 — Page 104

to be implemented. The question how the provisions of the Covenants would be incorporated into the legislation was complex and would be for the Chinese Government to decide. The reservations which had been expressed would also be maintained unless the Chinese Government decided otherwise. As to whether reports on Hong Kong would continue to be submitted to the Committee after 1997, the Chinese Government had recently made it known that it was prepared to ratify the Covenant and, accordingly, it would have to decide for itself whether the report of Hong Kong would be part of the report of China or submitted separately.

6.

In the United Kingdom's dependent territories, there were no special methods of increasing public awareness of the Covenant's provisions and the study of the Covenant was not a specific feature of educational programmes. In the Falkland Islands, however, the provisions of chapter I of the Constitution, which were very similar to those of the Covenant, were frequently debated in the Legislative Council. In Gibraltar, the rights set forth in the Covenant were guaranteed by the Constitution and the population was fully aware of that fact. In Hong Kong, the wide-ranging debate on the drafting of the Basic Law had been widely commented on by the media and there was no doubt that the population was fully aware of the Covenant's provisions. In Montserrat and Pitcairn Island, seminars and lectures were organized to comment on the provisions of the Covenant, whose text was made available free of charge to anyone wishing to study it. In the Turks and Caicos Islands, the new 1988 Constitution reproduced the provisions of the Covenant relating to human rights and had been widely studied and commented on prior to its adoption.

7.

He

In Hong Kong, the study of the Covenant's provisions in educational establishments was certainly not prohibited and far from being discouraged. On the contrary, a civic education programme focused particularly on the study of legislation and the Covenant was naturally dealt with in that context. could not say whether the Chinese version of the Covenant was readily available, but extracts from it were often published in the Chinese press in Hong Kong and quoted during debates in the Legislative Council. In all territories, the population was informed of the Committee's meetings and consulted during the drafting of reports. The summary records of the Committee's meetings were also sent to the Governments of the territories.

8.

In reply to Mr. Movchan's comment that the second periodic report did not deal with the situation in 1988 and did not describe the progress made, the practice followed and the problems encountered in recent years, he recalled that, when his Government had ratified the Covenant, it had made sure that it was being implemented in all territories and the situation had not changed in that regard. The report described all new developments in detail, particularly in the territory of Hong Kong, on which there were 162 paragraphs in document CCPR/C/32/Add.14 and 51 in document CCPR/C/32/Add.15. In the other territories, there had been little change in the human rights situation since the date of the initial report.

9. As and when necessary, his Government intended to withdraw some of the reservations it had expressed. It also planned to ratify the Convention on Torture by the end of 1988 and consultations on the implementation of that Convention were already under way in the dependent territories.