DESPATCH FROM HONG KONG
BY JIM BIDDULPH
FRIDAY JANUARY 19th 1979 FN TEL CALL 1230 approx.
HUEY FONG
CUE:
191.
HER 2431+
8.31
03 216
RECEIV
IN
M
After lying at anchor for four weeks just outside Hong Kong, the refugee ship Huey Fong entered Hong Kong waters today and its passengers are to be brought ashore. From Hong Kong, Jim Biddulph reports.
The Hong Kong government disclosed tonight that there were not just two-thousand-seven-hundred people crammed on board the battered and leaking Huey Fong as previously thought, but three-thousand-three- hundred-and-eighty-three of whom more than one-thousand-three-hundred were children. A government spokesman said the decision not to prevent the ship from entering Hong Kong waters has been taken on humanitarian grounds. Conditions on board were giving increasing cause for anxiety, weather conditions were deteriorating and a cold front was on the way. However, the statement added that the government was well aware that the majority of Hong Kong people supported the government's action in refusing to admit further large numbers of refugees to an already over-crowded territory. Hong Kong already has more than five thousand Vietnamese refugees awaiting resettlement. The Huey Fong pulled up its rusting anchor and moved slowly into Hong Kong waters after news agency reports had said that Taiwan, where the ship was orginially meant to be heading, would definitely not accept the refugees. The Hong Kong government statement made no mention of what will happen to the Captain and crew of the lluey Fong. The colony recently passed new stringent laws aimed at stopping the traffic in refugees. The master, or owner of the vessel, convicted of carrying .unlawful passsengers into Hong Kong waters can now be jailed for four
years.
This is Jim Biddulph in Hong Kong.
END
IMC/BUSH NIU/1250