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Indo-China:
[14 FEBRUARY 1979]
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Jones went there with all his crew They are under-populated and they need more people in their country. These refugees are hard-working and I am sure that they would fit in well. In Trinidad and Tobago--and I am not suggesting they take any-the Chinese, the Indians and the African stock all get on very well together. I should like to know from the Minister concerned whether anything has been thought of in this way.
Lord MONSON: My Lords, I do not think that these people would like to go from one Marxist frying pan into another Marxist fire.
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, they | will probably get on very well together. I do not think it is fair to say that Guyana is a Marxist country. They have quite a stable Government. The noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, may correct me if I am wrong, but I would not say that it is a Marxist country. Neither would I say Belize or these other were Marxist. After all, these people will be so grateful that I do not think they are going to start political trouble when they go to other countries. They will be grateful for their chance to earn their living and live, I hope, happily and peacefully, creating a new life for themselves. I do not think this is a political matter in any way and I am very sorry that the noble Lord raised that point.
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too. I do not know whether the noble Lord is interested in Indonesia; it also has been criticised. It works very well; things have settled down happily. I hope this point may be given consideration.
8.52 p.m.
Lord SEGAL: My Lords, I feel that we are all very grateful indeed to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for having initiated. this debate, one which is long overdue. In my view, it is far more important than the debate which preceded it. We are discussing this evening not merely a matter of deprivation but the sheer saving of human lives, and very valuable human lives at that. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, speaks from a direct involve- ment with this terrible problem, having seen at first hand the sufferings of the refugees. I can only speak from my personal impressions of having visited South Vietnam on three occasions prior to its fall into the hands of the Viet Cong.
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The tragedy that has followed in the wake of this so-called ·liberation' is painfully known to all of us: the battered old hulks, laden with their grizzly cargoes of desperate refugees, seeking asylum anywhere on dry land so long as it is not in Vietnam. It is a bitter tribute to the agonics that these people have had to endure. What is not known to us and may never be known, as the noble Lord, Lord Elton, pointed out, is the number of the countless thousands of refugees who have been drowned in the desperate efforts to escape from their former homeland, now converted into a living hell, or the fate of even more countless thousands uprooted from their urban homes and dumped into bare, rural areas without adequate subsistence and little hope of survival. It is a degree of rural deprivation and sheer inhumanity that is almost beyond the power of words to describe.
There are other organisations, like the Ockenden Venture, who would be per- fectly willing to set up children's homes in the countries concerned, if they could get permission. This is something else. that I should like the noble Lord to think about. I am anxious that as many people as possible should settle in their own country; it is much the happiest way for them. Perhaps we could do something and have Government-to- Government talks if this is possible or, through the International Red Cross, I remember very vividly secing a find some way in which these people can propaganda film by the Viet Cong shown live happily among their relations" rather in Vienna two years ago when they showed than in the dreadful conditions to which with a sense of triumph and achievement the noble Lord, Lord Elton, referred, lorries rounding the streets of Saigon with the tragic loss of lives particularly with people being forced into them: the among the boat people when they are old, the young, the crippled and the trying to escape. I am putting this maimed. They were dumped in open forward as an idea. It works in Indo- bare land, given spades in their hands and nesia. People have said very rude things expected to survive. The same film and unfortunate things about Indonesia, | showed a classroom in a primary school