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PS/Lord Goronwy-Roberts
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cc PS/Mr Luard
Mr Leahy
Mr Simpson-Orlebar
Mr Quantrill
Mr Smith
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HOUSE OF LORDS: UNSTARRED QUESTION: INDO-CHINA REFUGEE PROBLEM
1. I have just seen Mr Simpson-Orlebar's submission of
8 February about Lord Elton's unstarred question on Indo-China
refugees for answer on 14 February.
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I am
2. My own view is that the penultimate page of the draft
winding-up speech is not tough enough. I think the Minister of State could draw a distinction between small boat refugees who
flee from Vietnam, frequently with the connivance of Vietnamese
agencies, and the export of refugees by big ships. The latter is a cynical practice by the Vietnamese Government in dumping its unwanted population on the rest of the world; there are now many indications amounting to circumstantial proof that the Vietnamese Government itself is arranging
this not just conniving at - practice; and it is to this racket that the Secretary of State referred when he saw the Vietnamese Ambassador last month. pretty sure that the Minister will be asked about the excellent articles in the Sunday Observer and Telegraph, describing how these people mostly ethnic Chinese - are collected together by the Vietnamese Government and put into tramp steamers produced by entrepreneurs, the people themselves having been fleeced of gold and possessions. It would be as well for HKGD and UND to give you the text of these articles with a firm line to take on their credibility. The journalists appear to have been fed a very good story (I suspect from Hong Kong) and though the Minister of State should be careful about confirming explicit details (because the Hong Kong Government do not wish explicit details in the press to prejudice their prosecution cases against the Master of the 'Huey Fong' and others) the Departments should give you a form of words indicating that the articles give a good impression of what
is going on.
12 February 1979
DF Murray
CONFIDENTIAL