ABSTRACT
Royal orders in council and defence regulations gave colonial governors special powers during times of war, including the power to order anyone to leave the colony. Governors, officials and legislators believed deportation to be an essential tool for maintaining order. It was 'our best trump card', said one chief of police in 1904, the easiest way of disposing of the troublemakers who infested the colony. A succession of deportation orders then followed, each specifying the ship on which Ho Chi Minh was to be deported to Indochina, while Ho's lawyers – Loseby and barrister F. C. Jenkin KC – pursued habeas corpus proceedings on the basis that the orders were faulty and the whole procedure 'subterfuge' by the government, a 'sham under cloak of deportation'. Reformist politicians campaigned for a form of local citizenship that would remove the 'shadow of deportation' hanging over some two million Hong Kong residents born in China.
