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The Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Vietnam reaffirmed to the British Ambassador in the Republic of Vietnam what he had already informed the Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London, Mr Hattersley: namely that the 118 illegal emigrants who had been repatriated from Hong Kong are being treated fairly and will be tried in open court in the normal way according to the laws of this country. It is not expected that these illegal emigrants would receive any exceptional punishment."
A few days later the Vietnamese Minister for Information, in reply to a telegram from Amnesty International, said that "no case of death or injury has been reported among those detained prior to appearing in court".
There is in fact no evidence that the group are, as you suggest, facing physical and mental torture, After they had been repatriated, it was found that one member, who had given a false name in Hong Kong, had previously been condemned to death on smuggling charges. He has since been re-tried and sentenced, instead, to life imprisonment. About 29 of the remaining 117 (comprising women, children and old people) have now been released, and the remainder are being held in prisons in or near Saigon while they await trial for illegal emigration. They are not in Con Son.
Allegations to the contrary that have appeared in the press, that a number of the group have died, been sent to the front or heen tortured, are, to the hest of our knowledge, quite untrue. Certainly those who have spread these rumours have failed, despite repeated requests, to produce any evidence to support them.
When considering whether Hong Kong is able to accept illegal immigrants, we have to remember that this tiny colony already contains over 4 million people, one of the highest
/population