CODE 18-77
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Reference..
[!
aufhin
nh Quy
$41/5
Mr Williamson (HK&GD K 242)
1.3
HRA 240/1
- 2 MAY 1979.
MASK OF HIDEX
ISLAND TRANSIT CENTRE IN INDONESIA FOR REFUGEES! J2.3
f.
1. Mr Furness in Jakarta telephoned me this morning as a follow- up to Jakarta telno 118.
2. He said there was an air of confusion in Jakarta about exactly what the conference on 15/16 May was hoping to achieve. It would be wrong to be too optimistic about Hong Kong's inclusion in the scheme. There was no-one in Jakarta who thought that there would be enough room on the island for Vietnamese refugees from Hong Kong and the Indonesians have been surprised at the robust line we are taking over Hong Kong's inclusion. Mr Furness went on to say that what was regarded now as a scheme exclusive to ASEAN would probably turn out to be exclusive to Indonesia. In practice, Malaysia and Thailand would probably be excluded from the scheme and the Philippines are expected to offer an island of their own which would, presumably, be mainly for refugees presently in the Philippines. It was looking increasingly as though the Indonesians were expecting to set up an island centre mainly for their own refugees which was to be funded by the international community through the UNHCR.
3. Given the limited scope of the island proposal, Mr Furness could not really understand what, in practice, Hong Kong had to gain from being included in the scheme. I told him that since Hong Kong was a tiny territory coping each year with a vast number of immigrants and refugees and whose population weRO WAS becoming restive about the influx it would be politically unacceptable for Hong Kong to be seen to be excluded from the scheme. We appreciated that probably only a small number of refugees in Hong Kong could be moved at any one time to the island centre. Nevertheless, such a measure would relieve at least some pressure on the camps in Hong Kong and show that the colony was not being neglected by the rest of the inter- national community.
report 4. I pointed out the inconsistency between the quote in Jakarta telno 118 (that refugees would be taken to the island from remote areas of some of the countries in the region where there was no physical UNHCR presence to enable them to be processed ie refugees who were not pre-selected) and the condition set out in the ASEAN statement made in February that only those refugees who had been guaranteed resettlement places elsewhere would be permitted to go to the island. Mr Furness said that this was an indication of the kind of confusion existing with regard to the whole scheme.
5. I made the additional point that although at the outset Hong Kong was unlikely to gain a great deal from being associated with the scheme, we had no way of knowing how the scheme would
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