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alleged by the former administration of President Nguyen Van Thieu in Saigon to have been "abducted and held by the communists". These included 11 Montagnard nuns, allegedly abducted from Dakto in the Central Highlands in 1972. In April 1975, following presistent group inquiries, a report was received from Vietnam that the nuns had been released after being detained by the communists for more than two years. At that point, Al's investigations were over- taken by events.
In June 1974, 118 South Vietnamese men, women and children of Chinese origin were caught by the Hong Kong authorities as they tried to enter the British Crown Colony by boat unobserved. A few days later they were sent back to Saigon on the basis of being "illegal immigrants", where they were detained for having broken South Vietnamese emigration laws. Relatives in Hong Kong made strong allegations that the 118 were tortured after their arrival in Saigon, and there were reports that a number of them had been killed.
Amnesty International gave publicity to these allegations in an effort to avert possible ill-treatment. In August 1974, A.J.J. Sanguinetti, member of Justice (the Hong Kong-British section of the International Commission of Jurists), went on a mission to Saigon to investigate the condition and status of the 118. In October 1974, the 118 were reportedly tried by a civil court: 10 were acquitted and the rest received light sentences.
In November, 33 men of military age among them were tried for desertion: 10 were acquitted and the others given sentences of up to 10 years. In the October trial, it was revealed that one of the prisoners had died. Subsequently, a second death among the 118 prisoners was reported by a reliable source in Saigon.
Before the 118 were sent back to Saigon, AI had appealed to the British and Hong Kong governments to delay any decision about their return pending a review in depth of each individual case on humanitarian grounds, to determine whether they would be permitted to reside in Hong Kong or elsewhere. Some of them with relatives in the colony appeared to have "a possible claim to entry to Hong Kong had they chosen to apply through normal, official channels", as the then Director of Immigration in Hong Kong, W.E. Collard, put it later. A number of them were men of draft age who apparently objected to serving in the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (Saigon).
In spite of the assurance given to AI on 12 June 1974 by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office that a “reasonable opportunity" should be given to explore the possibility of the 118 residing in third countries, they were expelled from Hong Kong on 17 June.