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UK-registered ships who cannot be resettled elsewhere.
Participating countries with ships in the area who have not made a similar commitment should be urged to do so.
(iii) Hong Kong: The meeting should be left in no doubt of Hong
Kong's problems. Since 1975 Hong Kong has accepted for permanent settlement some 10,000 people from Indo-China, including about 4,000 former Vietnam residents with Hong Kong connections who were airlifted by the Hong Kong Government from Saigon. In addition many thousands of Vietnamese refugees have passed through Hong Kong for processing before being resettled in other countries. There are presently more than 4,000 Vietnamese refugees mainly "boat refugees" there, most of whom have very little prospect of resettlement elsewhere. The Colony has consistently operated a generous asylum policy in respect of Vietnamese refugees.
(iv) Finance: To remind the meeting of our contribution to UNHCR
(over £6 million so far this year) and urge others to be equally generous (some participants have made no contribution at all). Although we are less directly involved in Indo- China than other areas with serious refugee problems, we have, nevertheless, earmarked £1.5 million for the UNHCR Indo-China
programme in 1978; the last £1⁄2 million of this was pledged
only two weeks ago. It would seem best not to consider a further offer until we see how others respond.
(v)
Action with Vietnam: The problem is being created by the Vietnamese Government which has expropriated the property of members of the (mainly Chinese) middle class from South
Vietnam and is conniving at an arrangement by which, after
paying in gold, they are enabled to flee the country by sea.
There is mounting published evidence about this. In concert
with the Nine and other friendly countries, we should seek
the widest possible acknowledgement of the Vietnamese
Government's cynical role, and see what can be done to get
them to stop behaving in such a way towards so many of their
own people that the latter prefer to risk death by drowning
rather than stay in Vietnam. At the very least, the aim
/should
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