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I believe you will share my view that Taiwan
should share the world burden by opening its doors
to at least some of those of Chinese race who are
being forced to leave a repressive Communist country
like Vietnam. We have a British ship now standing
off a Taiwanese port, with nearly 300 refugees aboard.
As you know we have no official relationship with the
authorities there. In this situation, which gets
worse each day with the exodus from Vietnam, I would
greatly value your advice and help.
We are appealing publicly for Taiwan to show
the humanity already extended by many Asian nations
and accept a fair proportion of refugees. It would
help to know if you have an opening for reinforcing
this with a private appeal to the Taiwan authorities
to respond to world concern. If so, I hope you could
consider using it to help the fate of the refugees,
not just those in the British ship but also future
boatloads who find their way to Taiwan or are picked
up at sea by ships heading for Taiwan ports.
I would welcome your urgent views.