SPEAKING NOTE
The Hong Kong Government appreciates the humanitarian feelings which have motivated the city of Frankfurt to offer to accept 250 of those on board the Huey Fong for resettlement.
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The Huey Fong is en route from Bangkok to Kaohsiung in Taiwan. Kaohsiung was its scheduled first port of call. When the Master of the Huey Fong first approached the Hong Kong Government for permission to enter Hong Kong he was over 1,000 miles distant. "was told that, since Hong Kong was not his first port of
call, he would not be allowed to enter nor to land refugees here. He chose to disregard this instruction, although other ports were nearer than Hong Kong if he had required urgent medical assistance, and Kaohsiung was not significantly further away if he had continued on his original voyage.
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The Huey Fong is at present outside Hong Kong's territorial waters and jurisdiction. The government has frequently stated that it is not prepared to allow those on the Huey Fong to be landed in Hong Kong as refugees. Hong Kong's policy of applying the "first port of call” policy to genuine survivors of shipwrecks is well known and has been frequently repeated. Following this policy the Hong Kong Government has already accepted for temporary stay a large number of refugees from Vietnam. Over 5,000
· are at present in Hong Kong awaiting resettlement. Over half of these have already been here for longer than the three months they were originally alloved - some for, over a year.
The Hong Kong Government could not accept that 250 refugees from those already here should be resettled in Germany in return for the landing of a substantial number of those most in need of care and attention on the Huey Fong. As the Consul-General will know, the Hong Kong Government has already made emergency arrangements to deal with all those on the Huey Fong requiring urgent medical attention. To operate a swop arrangement would destroy the first port of call principle and would be an encouragement to other ships who attempt to blackmail the Hong Kong Government. It would not contribute to an orderly and humane settlement of the refugee problem.
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