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not myself see the offence against the hawker being committed, I did see the commotion that resulted, and the anger of the bystanders against the officer who inflicted the injury. In view of the serious nature of the injury, I engaged a solicitor to investigate the case. accompanied the solicitor to find witnesses. The witnesses were numerous, amounting to dozens of people. They were all angry, but when asked to appear in court as witnesses, they all said it was impossible. On being pressed for a reason for this lack of civic spirit, they said they had been threatened. The hawkers standing in the vicinity of the incident said they had been photographed and each one interviewed and warned that if they took part in any court proceedings against the accused officer, they would be deported and their families would suffer; moreover, their stalls would be confiscated. No one dared to stand as witness, and the case failed. One man, not a hawker, who originally said he saw the incident and would appear as a witness, was imprisoned under the deportation regulations a short time before the case was heard. He was charged with being a member of a Triad Society. This may or may not have been true. It seems almost certain that many citizens are forced to become triad members; they are thereby frightened into crime protection; those who fail to carry out their oath of secrecy to the Triad Society soon find themselves in trouble. I can vouch for the truth of this case. It is not second-hand information; I worked closely with the solicitor on the case.

An even more serious use is being made of these deportation regulations to frighten witnesses from reporting dangerous drug rackets. From the mouth of a police inspector who works on drugs, I have it that anyone giving information about drugs is at once suspected and is investigated as a potential blackmailer-informer. I personally know a woman who reported drugs, and she was certainly not a blackmailer. After giving information which she had carefully collected because she felt it her civic duty to do so, she was arrested, and made to report daily at the Police Station. She gave information as to which police officers were involved in the street where she lived. The case was a big one, and it recently appeared in the press. The woman should have been the principal witness, but she was forbidden to enter the court, on pain of deportation. She did not appear in the court, and the small fry were convicted; none of the police involved or used to be involved appeared in the dock,

These threats may be dubbed "empty threats", but at least they were enough to pervert judgment in two cases.

Now let me mention a case in which the threats were not empty. A man informed the police of a heroin racket in his neighbourhood. Others supported him at first, until he was arrested under the deportation regulations. I have checked this case very carefully with the help of

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a European ex-police inspector and two solicitors. Several facts have come to light which should be viewed with great alarm. The others who knew of the drug racket suddenly grew afraid of the case; later, they gained courage when they saw that their comrade was suffering in prison, and for nearly two years they have tried to show the case to be one of framing. Some who witnessed for the prosecution say that they did not have any serious charge against the man, and that they were taken to some building in a covered car; they did not know where they were, and they did not actually have to speak. One man refused to give false witness, though he was offered a favour to do so. No witnesses for the defence were called. The solicitor for the defence was excluded from the majority of the hearing; he expressed grave concern about it but could do nothing. This man, for whom I have tried for nearly two years to get a public trial, was one of those who recently went on a hunger strike. Perhaps these men can find no other way of protesting against injustice. I want to add that I have information that this prisoner whose name is Mr. TSANG Sang is to appear to have his case reviewed on Friday, and I understand the same method is going to be used, which I presume means he will have no defence witnesses and his solicitor will be excluded, and I am awaiting this trial with both concern and interest.

These deportation regulations are said to be for the protection of the public. Yet if each case is examined, it will be found that the men under detention are (at least in my experience) all little men. Many of them have tried to report crime, and have been accused of blackmail and triad activities. None of these men are big enough to be involved in the biggest crime of all, that is drug importation and manufacture, crimes which are worse than blackmail.

Threats of deportation make a wonderful weapon for the organizers of crime. What better weapon could any master criminal possess than to be able to pay a few false witnesses, threaten real witnesses, and have his informant tried secretly where he knows even the solicitor will have no say, and where he knows the magistrate and the other members of the Tribunal have no means of checking the truth of the charges brought against the victim?

Mr. Chairman, our motion is limited, dealing only with THREATS of deportation. If we, as a responsible civic body, will express our concern to Government that some civil servants are using their position to express threats of deportation against law-abiding citizens, I should sincerely hope that the Government would then review the position and see that more harm than good is being done by regulations that admittedly deprive human beings of their most elementary right, the right of public trial. It is bad enough that such action must take place in political cases, but when it appears evident that these regulations are now being used by the most vicious elements as a shield to protect

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