TNAG-2941-FCO40-4217-Future-of-Hong-Kong-nationality-ethnic-minorities-1993 — Page 27

6 July 1993

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HONG KONG: ASSURANCE FOR THE ETHNIC MINORITIES

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I understand that at the Home Secretary's meeting with the LegCo House Committee on 9 June, he offered to restate the Government's assurance to members of the ethnic minorities in Hong Kong. There will be an opportunity to do this during the Adjournment Debate on this subject on 9 July, but I thought I should warn you that LegCo members and their sympathisers in the House will be watching carefully for the terms in which that assurance is restated.

I believe that the House Committee pressed Michael Howard to confirm that if any ethnic Chinese British Nationals in Hong Kong came under pressure to leave after 1997, they too would be covered by the assurance originally given to the ethnic minorities. The Home Secretary indicated that these people would have nowhere else to go and would therefore fall under the Government's undertaking. As you may be aware, Emily Lau has made much of this in the press and has warned that there would be "trouble" if the Home Office were to attempt to resile from this assurance.

Ms Lau is of course wrong to suggest that Baroness Young's original assurance, on 14 March 1985 was intended to apply to all Hong Kong BDTCs, but I think we would all agree that in the circumstances which the Home Secretary envisaged, we would not expect to distinguish between individual British Nationals under pressure to leave Hong Kong and seeking sanctuary here. I suggest that when the subject is raised in future it would be right to make clear that the assurance was devised expressly for the ethnic minorities. However, if asked to confirm in supplementaries what the Home Secretary said on 9 June, we should do so. I know the Governor is concerned that any attempt to resile will play very badly in Hong Kong. I suggest something on the following lines;

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