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the Muslim population in Sabah.
4.
Mr Kamarulzaman confirmed that the Malaysian Government had no plans to start shooting refugees on sight. This was a typical indiscretion from Datuk Mahathir, but nonetheless it did express what many Malays would like to do. Mr Kamaralzaman reiterated that there would be a lot of trouble in Malaysia if the Malays thought that the Chinese population of the country was going to be increased permanently by even a few score as a result of the exodus from Vietnam.
5.
Mr Hartantyo explained the difficulties for Indonesia in accepting Chinese or Vietnamese for permanent settlement in similar terms. I said that Sumatra and Indonesian Borneo were very thinly populated: perhaps the Indonesian Government should welcome some energetic new settlers, particularly in Sumatra? Mr Hartantyo said that the Indonesian people would resent an influx however small of energetic Chinese, even in thinly populated Sumatra. He also pointed out that such people when assisted by the UNHCR lived in conditions superior to those of the desperately poor existing inhabitants. This was the material for a racial conflagration in South-East Asia. The Chinese assisted by UNHCR would soon dominate commerce and agriculture. Mr Hartantyo thought that if other countries outside the region really solved the main problem Indonesia would quite unofficially, without their own population really knowing about it, allow say 2,000 to stay.
6. The Malaysian and the Indonesian said that the root of the problem as far as their countries were concerned was the fact that the refugees were Chinese (or Vietnamese which in their eyes amounted to much the same thing). They might be welcomed by the existing Chinese populations but the Malays/Javanese simply would not put up with them. After all the British did not seem to like their Indian and African immigrants all that much; why should the indigenous inhabitants of South-East Asia put up with more Chinese.
7. We all agreed that the position in Thailand was somewhat different. But in that country the comparative tolerance of the Thais was under the greatest strain.
cc: Mr Cortazzi
Mr Murray HKGD✓
UND
Mr MacInnes
UKMIS Geneva
20 June 1979
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bolin A. Menno
CA Munro PS/Mr Blaker