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SCMP Reporter

WHEN the former prisoners of war (PoWs) started their fight for British passports in the early '80s, they assumed that once they gained citizenship, their wives would automatically have the right of abode, too.

  They were wrong. In 1987, the men were awarded their passports but not their wives, or the widows of those who died during the Pacific war.

  The women have been fighting a seemingly never-ending battle to claim what they say is ''rightfully ours''.

  To date, they still live in disappointment.

  Through the relentless efforts of PoW rights campaigner Jack Edwards, the women have written countless letters and lodged applications for passports to the Government and its respective departments. All have been rejected.

  As 1997 draws nearer, anxiety has grown among the women. But Mr Edwards said the signing of the Sino-British Declaration was a turning point.

  According to Security Branch principal assistant secretary Simon Vickers, there was no new development in the issue.

  Mr Vickers said the women had been given individual letters informing them they could receive British passports. ''They have given the promise of passports but to actually get that in hand, they have to go to England,'' he said.

  Mr Vickers said the women would have to live a ''substantial period'' in Britain but he would not say how long.

  Former PoW Luigi Ribeiro, whose wife is also fighting for a passport, said the women would have to ''confirm [nationality] with a three-year residence [in the UK]''.

  ''Most of them are elderly and it is not so easy for them to move,'' he said.

  Mr Vickers also discounted the possibility of the women applying for passports under the British Nationality Scheme 1990.

  ''They do not qualify under the point system because they are much too old,'' he said.

  But Mr Edwards said that under a section of the scheme, stating ''in view of their interests of the Crown'', the Governor had the power to recommend 6,300 applicants for UK passports.

  ''But they are holding these passports for some of those bloody civil servants,'' he lashed out.

  ''As for the letters sent to the women? They are only blinking letters to facilitate entry to Britain; which will only mean they [women] get the forms quicker.''   But Mr Vickers said the women were in a better position than the ''other ethnic minorities'' in the territory.

  ''They are given the assurance that if things went wrong, then Britain would look at their cases sympathetically.''   Mr Vickers said their husbands were awarded the passports because they did serve the country and that they were ''one step away''.

  ''After all mainland Chinese wives cannot come to join their husbands here,'' he said.

  Mr Vickers said they had heard unofficially the legal advice to the British Home Office was not to stretch the interpretation of the English law any further.

  ''In the British system, we cannot have the officials above the law,'' he said.

  But Mr Ribeiro said the women's fight for passports was ''very little to ask of your mother country''.



Women on the outside in British passport plan