ground. He conceded that there was a great difference between what the Chinese said and what the Chinese laws said and what was implemented on the ground.
7. On the question of Tibet, Lord Howe said that there were variations in China between, for example, Yunnan, where the authorities celebrated the fact that there were some ten minority nationalities within the province and Xinjiang where there was a strong colonial feel to the Chinese presence. He said that though he had not visited Tibet, he imagined that the colonial aspects of Chinese rule were even greater.
8. Pressed on the question of timescale for improvements in the human rights situation in China, Lord Howe said that he thought 5-10 years was too short a timescale to expect meaningful changes in the Chinese legal system. He said we should keep asking the Chinese at every appropriate senior level meeting whether they had yet drawn up the promised laws on religion, on the legal framework etc. He advocated exchanges of judges in both directions, adding that if Judge Stephen Tumin were to engage in dialogue with the Chinese we might get somewhere on prison reform. He also said that his delegation had felt that the Procuracy were real people dealing with real issues and should be helped where possible.
9. Lord Howe stressed the fact that we did not have as much leverage on the Chinese as some other nations and cautioned that we should not expect all that much all that quickly.
10. On the maintenance of human rights in Hong Kong after 1997, Lord Howe said that he did not favour establishing an independent commission on human rights in Hong Kong. Having put into place a Bill of Rights, the existing legal framework should be able to handle matters. On granting Hong Kong citizens the right of individual petition to the UN Commission on Human Rights, he said it would be difficult to give Hong Kong citizens a right which was not available to UK citizens. It would be better to press China to ratify the relevant UN conventions.
ва
Laurence Bristow-Smith
FED
WH240
270-2953
1 December 1993
2
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