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4.
We were also encouraged by Clark's fairly relaxed approach to the question of refugees who have spent time in China. However, his words were chosen carefully and there may still be problems with any refugees coming here who can be shown to have joined boats after crossing by land from Vietnam (Washington telegram to Hong Kong No 10 of 7 May, which arrived after this letter was drafted, confirms this). Our own experience is that very few are likely to admit this and that in any case the numbers are unlikely to be significant. As you know, we are still trying to persuade UNHCR in Geneva to deal with this problem more positively and flexibly than they have so far. Incidentally, one of our regular contacts in the US Consulate-General here (please protect) believes that Shepherd Lowman in the State Department's Office of Refugees and Migration is far less sympathetic to the plight of ethnic Chinese from North Vietnam than was Ambassador Clark.
5.
Clark was sympathetic to the argument that Hong Kong had a disproportionately large refugee burden because it has been the only place in the region to have kept up the humanitarian standards which the US and UNHCR have had such difficulty in seeing maintained elsewhere in the region. We also reminded him that last year over 400 refugees on the US destroyer WHIPPLE were landed in Hong Kong without any prior guarantee of resettlement in the US being sought. That would not have happened anywhere else in the region. Nevertheless, I fear that we have to recognise that howevei generous Clark was in his recognition of Hong Kong's record, both in private and at a press conference, it is going to need continuous hard effor, to translate this into resettlement numberɛ. The harsh truth is probably that if we started taking drastic inhumane action, such as shooting at refugee boats or towing them out to sink at sea, we would get offered more US places. But that is a game we cannot play.
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In order to do as well as we possibly can from the US programme, three lines of action are necessary:
(a)
continuing pressure on the Americans to keep to their undertakings about the flexible allocation of numbers. A useful argument is that the maintenance costs of refugees in Hong Kong are very much higher than in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. With large numbers the costs become immense: e.g. about US$18 million to keep 25,000 refugees (the present number) here for a year;
/contd.
CONFIDENTIAL