Britain's delayed honor on citizenship in Hong Kong

By Harvey Stockwin

HONG KONG (JP): A written answer in the House of Commons, provided by the British Home Secretary Michael Howard on Feb. 5, was a source of great relief for 3,252 Indians, 1,419 Pakistanis, 753 Portuguese, and 2,718 Eurasians and others.

All are longtime residents of Hong Kong. Nearly all of them were born here, many at a time when birth automatically gave one the right to British citizenship. All are ethnically non-Chinese, and therefore not liable to become Chinese subjects when Beijing assumes sovereignty over Hong Kong on the stroke of midnight on June 30 this year.

All these individuals have long faced the prospect of becoming stateless -- citizens of nowhere -- on July 1, 1997. They have been facing this bleak prospect for nearly thirteen years, ever since the Sino-British Joint Declaration, promising the reversion of the British colony to China, was signed in 1984 (see box).

Most are holders of either British Dependent Territory (BDTC) or British National Overseas (BNO) passports which permit them to merely visit but not to reside in Britain. The Joint Declaration, in essence, means that Britain gave the 8,142 a passport but not an abode, while China gave them an abode but not a nationality.

Effectively, Howard's written response in the House of Commons means that Hong Kong's potentially stateless ethnic minorities would now be able to secure British citizenship and the first class British passports which go with that status.

"It is clear," Howard said, "that the assurances which the solely British ethnic minorities have been given over a number of years have not allayed (the concern felt about their plight). I, therefore intend to make provisions enabling them to apply for registration as British citizens, giving them the right of abode in the United Kingdom after June 30, 1997."

Needless to say this gesture was widely applauded.

The disunited Indian pressure groups which had lobbied hard for the concession, some for 13 years, expressed appreciation that their efforts had finally born fruit.

Hong Kong Governor Christopher Patten, without whose efforts in pressuring his former cabinet colleagues, the change would not have been made, saw the change as "an excellent Chinese New Year present to Hong Kong".

A handful of Indian opportunists, who are resident in Hong Kong, did not wait to read the fine print. They interpreted the phrase "solely British nationals" as a reason for immediately going to the Indian consulate-general in Hong Kong to hand in their Indian passports.

The extent of their opportunism can be measured by the fact that the citizenship they were required to formally renounce had itself been given to them by India since 1984 -- precisely to offset the threat of becoming stateless.

The extent of their naivete can be measured by the fact that they were giving up a passport-in-the-hand for the promise of one in the bush. Howard's officials had, for example, indicated that they would need to make some "technical changes" to the private members bill stipulating passports for the stateless. This Bill has already passed all stages in the House of Lords, and now faces passage through the Commons.

What technical changes the Home Ministry has in mind is not yet clear. Presumably it will make sure that only deserving cases benefit from the concession.

Those who quickly abandoned their acquired Indian citizenship seemingly forgot that successive British conservative governments had taken a long time to recognize an obvious injustice -- even though Britain is ostensibly committed by treaty not to increase the numbers of those who are stateless.

As The Jakarta Post reported last year, the way in which the Tories failed to deal with this problem as soon as it arose has been a dishonorable exercise.

Last week, Labor and Liberal party spokesmen did not let the Tory government forget this, as they pointed out the Tories' previous electoral preference for a tough immigration policy, the imminence of a general election, and the new Tory priority for wooing the British ethnic vote.

But the dishonor goes deeper -- into the way in which the whole transition of Hong Kong from British to Chinese sovereignty has been handled.

The "ethnic minorities" issue has been connected, in the perception of Hong Kong Chinese as well as of the minorities, with the degree of energy and concern with which London handled the handover. A quick solution of this particular problem in the 1980s would have had a tonic effect on general confidence.

Conversely, the fact that Britain dithered over the stateless issue -- and even over giving passports to the handful of widows of those who died here, for Britain, in World War Two -- affected confidence adversely.

The British were so busy celebrating the Sino-British Joint Declaration as a "treaty" (which it wasn't), and insisting that all was well as China was regularly satisfied, that the problems of the transition were not treated with urgency and the intensity which was required.

This belated acceptance of responsibility for the non-Chinese who will be rendered stateless would never have taken place had it not been for the appointment of a politician like Patten as the last Governor.

The greater British failure was the fact that a leading politician was not appointed Governor of Hong Kong as soon as the ink was dry on the Joint Declaration in 1984.

Instead, diplomats, plus appeasement of China, were preferred, providing once again more "years for the locusts to eat", as Churchill said of British appeasement of Germany in the 1930s.

By the time Patten brought a politician's sense of urgency to bear on the Hong Kong problem, it was already late in the day. Even so, it had taken him five years to get London to end the injustice facing the stateless minority.