It’s Time for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Hong Kong
by Ka Hang WONG
The people of the United Kingdom have had their say. They voted for a Labour government. While Hongkongers in the UK have a lot to feel gratified under Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, which introduced the British National Overseas visa scheme in 2021, with a newly elected government, it is time for healing and reconciliation to begin. The BN(O) route to British citizenship was introduced following the 2019 Hong Kong protests that led to the Chinese-imposed National Security Law. This draconian law is seen as a breach of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration and a direct threat to the freedoms and autonomy of Hong Kong. However, while the Conservative government has made a courageous decision to offer a lifeboat to the Hongkongers, this decision is seen as a correction of a historical mistake (Yu, 2022, 2023). This article will outline the origin of the different classes of British nationality and argue that one of the unintended consequences of the British Nationality Selection Scheme of the 1990s is the perpetuation of political persecution in Hong Kong. Following the South African example, the article proposes a UK inquiry into the scheme that freely gave British passports to 50,000 important Hong Kong personnel and their families, including members of the civil service and the police force.
The background
After China was defeated in the First Opium War (1839-42), she continually ceded Hong Kong Island to Great Britain. The Treaty of Nanking was signed in 1842. The Second Opium War (1856-60) ended in 1860 when China ceded the Kowloon Peninsula to Britain under the Convention of Peking, also in perpetuity. As Britain sought to expand its territory in Hong Kong, the Second Convention of Peking was signed between the Qing government and Britain in 1898, and Britain leased the New Territories for 99 years, which would expire on June 30, 1997. It is from this second convention that the significance of the 1997 transfer of sovereignty is derived.
As the 1997 date neared, political uncertainty was intertwined with economic insecurity that threatened Hong Kong’s status as an important financial centre of the world. As a result, the Sino-British negotiations began with Thatcher’s visit to China in 1982. According to Mark (2020), the Chinese insisted that their sovereignty over Hong Kong was a non-negotiable basis for discussion. Although the British initially tried to propose an administration arrangement to the Chinese in exchange for their demand for sovereignty, the British eventually conceded both sovereignty and administration to the Chinese (Mark, 2020).
After two years of negotiations, both parties signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration on December 19, 1984. In the Joint Declaration, China agreed to maintain Hong Kong’s capitalist system and way of life for fifty years (Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China, 1984). According to Chua (1990), this was a concession in return for Britain forfeiting its legal right to Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula. Although China had claimed that the treaties were invalid because they were unfair treaties, both parties agreed to disagree on this point with the aim of a smooth transfer (Chua, 1990). Further, the PRC succeeded in requesting the United Nations to remove Hong Kong from the United Nations list of colonies after joining the United Nations in 1972 (Hung, 2022). This effectively stripped Hong Kong of the right to self-determination under the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (United Nations Human Rights, 1960). In addition, the British Nationality Act 1981 (UK) sealed the fate of Hongkongers as it stripped the British Dependent Territories Citizens (BDTC) of Hong Kong of the right to abode in the United Kingdom.
The point at which the current controversy over the BN(O)s began with the 1981 Act. Literature on the historiography covering the British Nationality Act has been scant. According to Mark (2020), discourses of the Thatcher government at the time relating to the concept of “Britishness” were based on a White Britain and ties of blood. The Hong Kong Chinese were deemed not to have close ties with the United Kingdom, and racial prejudice against them was around. The Act repealed the right of the colonial citizens of the Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies (CUKC) to enter and settle in Britain and reclassified British nationality into three categories, of which Hong Kong Chinese were reclassified into the BDTC category (Benson, 2023; Mark, 2020).
The 1981 Act and the future of Hong Kong created an identity crisis among the Hong Kong elites. Within months following Thatcher’s visit to China in September 1982 for talks with the Chinese counterparts over the future of Hong Kong, the British Nationality Act came into effect. According to Mark (2020), these events threatened the “Britishness of Hong Kong” (p. 579). The weakening connection to Britain had produced a “collective identity crisis” (“A Matter of Identity”, 1981, as cited in Mark, 2020, p. 584). The people of Hong Kong felt Britain was abandoning them. They were reminded of the discriminatory policy of 1962 when non-white colonial citizens lost the right to abode in Britain (Mark, 2020).
The sharpening along racial lines became even more apparent when the United Kingdom enabled the Falkland Islanders and Gibraltarians to gain full British citizenship (Benson, 2023). According to Mark (2020), the Gibraltarians could register as full British citizens because Gibraltar was part of the European Community. This registration was made possible under section 4 of the British Nationality Act 1981 (UK). Falkland Islanders were also able to become British citizens through the British Nationality (Falkland Islands) Act 1983 (UK). Inclusive provisions were made for the British populations of both places (Benson, 2023). The granting of British citizenships to the Falkland Islanders and Gibraltarians caused the Unofficial Members of the Executive and Legislative Councils in Hong Kong to complain that the Hong Kong Chinese were being treated as “second-class citizens” and that the United Kingdom was discriminating against Hong Kong (Mark, 2020). This put enormous pressure on the United Kingdom government. As a result, the 1981 Act was amended following the signing of the Joint Declaration to accommodate the Hong Kong Chinese who wished to retain connection with the United Kingdom beyond 1997 (Benson, 2023; Mark, 2020).
A new category of citizenship known as the British National (Overseas) (BN(O)) was created under the Hong Kong (British Nationality) Order 1986 (UK). The BN(O) passport holder is afforded British consular protection in third countries but not the right of abode in the United Kingdom (Benson, 2023; Mark, 2020). In effect, the BN(O) became the travel document mentioned in the Joint Declaration that the Hong Kong Chinese could use to travel to other states and regions. The BN(O) status cannot be passed on to the holder's children. Following the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, the United Kingdom made a further concession through the British Nationality (Hong Kong) Act 1990 (UK) to provide 50,000 elite families of Hong Kong with full British citizenship under the British Nationality Selection Scheme. However, the purpose of this offer was more to retain important personnel in Hong Kong rather than encouraging them to emigrate to the United Kingdom (Benson, 2023; Chuang, 1990). Since then, the BN(O) issue was largely buried in the media and academic literature until the unfolding events of 2019.
The British Nationality Selection Scheme in the perpetuation of political persecution in Hong Kong
The Thatcher administration saw the British Nationality Selection Scheme as offering an incentive to 50,000 important personnel and their families to stay in the British colony rather than an offer of immigration. The British had to ensure the stability of Hong Kong and prevent mass emigration out of Hong Kong prior to the handover. But what was intended had unfortunately turned into an abuse of power. Let us revisit what Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong, said in 2022:
Every one of my successors as Chief Executive of Hong Kong either had a foreign passport or had members of their family with foreign passports. The present Chief Executive had a British passport, which she gave up to become Chief Executive. Her husband has a British passport. Her sons have British passports. Now I’m not against that. I hope they’ll enjoy the liberties and freedoms which come with being a British citizen with that passport, but what is of course a rather unhappy paradox is the people at the moment, the quislings, including members of the police force, doing the persecuting, have British passports, and the ones who are being persecuted, the ones who are being locked up, don’t. I think we should address that rather unhappy imbalance in due course (Hong Kong Watch, 2022, 6:22, my emphasis).
In this extract, Patten raises an important issue. That is, the people who are persecuting ordinary Hongkongers are the very people to whom the British government awarded British citizenship. The context of Patten’s speech was to argue that post-1997 Hongkongers should be able to apply for the BN(O) route independently of their parents who hold the BN(O) nationality. Patten’s point was that although principal officials in the post-handover Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) are required to renounce their foreign citizenship before they are appointed, the connection with their immediate families meant that these officials could immediately go into exile in the United Kingdom should the political situation in the HKSAR turned tumultuous. In the example highlighted by Patten, Carrie Lam, the then Chief Executive of the HKSAR, whose term was arguably defined by her mishandling of the extradition Bill that led to the 2019 Hong Kong protests, could have escaped to the United Kingdom because of her connection with her husband and sons who were awarded British citizenships in the 1990s. Lam’s family was one of those 50,000 families who were handed British citizenship because of Lam’s work with the colonial government. The post-1997 Hongkongers who were persecuted or in jail would not have such luxury. Thus, Patten’s speech indicates that it is the inequality of British nationality law that enables the perpetuation of current persecution in Hong Kong. As a champion of those oppressed, Patten succeeded in this argument because the BN(O) scheme has been expanded since 2022.
Although Patten has succeeded in helping the post-1997 Hongkongers to gain independent access to the BN(O) scheme, this article recommends that the United Kingdom hold an inquiry into the role of the British Nationality Selection Scheme in perpetuating political violence in Hong Kong. Many Hongkongers are suffering from post-traumatic disorder since arriving in the UK (Liang, 2022). Hongkongers who do not possess the BN(O) nationality or could not afford to emigrate are grieving the loss of their hometown (Chan, 2024). In the context of South Africa, legislation that institutionalised racial segregation and domination came into effect after the Nationalists came into power in 1948 (Peacock, 2011). Similarly, after Thatcher came into power, the 1981 Act implemented a racial demarcation policy designed to segregate the white population who had the right to enter the United Kingdom from the Hong Kong Chinese who did not have such right. The 1986 Order similarly perpetuated the United Kingdom’s racial policy because the original intent of the BN(O) nationality was to exclude the Hong Kong Chinese from emigrating to the United Kingdom. It was the 1990 Act that gave 50,000 important personnel and their families full British citizenship as insurance policy so that they can have a home to go to should they wish to leave Hong Kong. The 1990 Act thus perpetuated the inequality of classes of people. Only those deemed important to the future of Hong Kong were granted British citizenship, while those who were not deemed important enough were treated as “second-class” British nationals.
Perhaps what was not realised then was the impact the British Nationality Selection Scheme would have on these “second class” British nationals. While the BN(O) route is now correcting a historical mistake of inequality, this article urges the British government to take responsibility for its nationality law that, according to Patten, perpetuates the current political persecution of Hongkongers. Following the South African example, a place to start could be a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Both the perpetrators of rights abuses—including the then-British figures involved in legislating the British nationality law—and those persecuted by authority figures who were given British passports could be invited to the commission in the United Kingdom either physically or via video conferencing, where both sides could share openly and honestly about what went wrong that ultimately led to the Hong Kong protests, the extradition Bill of 2019, and the Chinese-imposed National Security Law in 2020.
A central agenda of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission could be promoting common understanding. This could include an open acknowledgment of the unintended consequences of granting full British citizenship to only a certain population of Hong Kong, the ongoing breaches of the Sino-British Joint Declaration by the totalitarian-party state after the transfer of sovereignty, the trauma resulting from the 2019 Hong Kong protests, and the silencing after the National Security Law, and more recently, Article 23. Further, the commission needs to facilitate the transformation of unjust inequality, as the BN(O) route has done, to address the dehumanising effect of being unable to enter one’s own country freely. Prior to the handover, the British colony had 3.5 million BDTCs (Hansard, 6 June 1989, col 16). With an estimated 2.9 million Hongkongers eligible for the BN(O) passport (Summers, 2022), this leaves approximately 600,000 Hongkongers out of the current BN(O) offer because they did not register for the BN(O) nationality prior to the handover. Some of these individuals may have been children at the time and are now left without the protection and potential pathway to British citizenship that the BN(O) status provides, leaving them particularly vulnerable in the current political climate.
In conclusion, we must amplify the voices of vulnerable people who are oppressed by the Chinese regime, perpetuated by an unjust British nationality law. Following his house arrest, former CCP general secretary Zhao Ziyang asked the CCP leadership to revisit the verdict of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre (Zhao, 2009). The CCP leadership has repeatedly silenced his lone voice, and the massacre has been largely erased from memory on the Chinese mainland. We, therefore, know that under the hardline leadership of Xi Jinping, the Chinese and HKSAR governments are unlikely to hold the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that this article proposes. However, Hong Kong has the benefit of British involvement and responsibility that can shed light on what happened to its own history. A United Kingdom Truth and Reconciliation Commission could prevent the suppression of memories by providing amnesty to people participating in the commission through an agreement with the HKSAR government. Alternatively, it could allow people to participate anonymously. Instead of silencing those memories, the voices of suffering under a brutal totalitarian regime after the transfer of sovereignty can be amplified. As Peacock (2011) states, “from silence and forgetfulness, memory and identity need to complete the past, providing the foundations of justice for future generations” (p. 333).
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