!
PRESS CONFERENCE BY H.E. THE GOVERNOR 27/6/79
PAW
refugees
Sir Murray:
HER
1469A
·
་
see
Well, gentlemen, we've covered"a lot of countries since I saw you last. Lady and gentlemen: I'm sorry, I didn't you there Patricia. I've attended maness conferences in my time but I've never seen quite so much hardware on the table before, and it looks as if it's of an infinitely better quality.
It
Well, first of all why did we go on this visit? was to do with two basic problems: first of all, the problem of excessive Chinese immigration which was in danger of swamping Hong Kong and over which the Chinese authorities have been slow to take remedial action. Because of this we have had to deploy the entire Garrison to try and arrest the inflow and deter it and were reaching a point at which the men were getting very tired and they were not going to be able to continue with this maximum effort indefinitely and therefore reinforcements were
necessary.
My first task was to explain to the people in London. why. Now, this is a bilateral problem between ourselves and China. The Chinese authorities have given us very firm assurances that they will bring the number down and I haven't the slightest doubt that these assurances will be honoured. just a question of time. But during the time the numbers matter t us enormously, so it's very important that we keep up our
It's
effort.
And
The other problem was the problem of refugees from Vietnam. This isn't a bilateral problem at all even though it hits Hong Kong particularly hard. It's a regional problem and it can only be solved, in my opinion, on a world basis because the numbers which must be resettled are so great. Hence Mrs. Thatcher's imaginative and timely call for a conference. here we felt that with out first hand knowledge of the problem we might perhaps be able to help those in London and Washington and New York and Geneva by telling them what we knew of the problem at first hand and that this would help the whole process along of getting a worthwhile conference on the ground.
Of course all the time, as you probably realise, intense diplomatic activity
I think no less than to support this conference is developing.
54 of the Missions in London have been called in and spoken to. So this was our object.
!
cover
Now, you want to know who we saw and what ground we ed with them. In London, we had talks with Lord Carrington and Mr Blaker, a good scion of a Hong Kong family; Sir Ian Gilmour and other Foreign Office Ministers. We had talks with the Minister of Defence, Mr Pym, and Mr Whitelaw the Home Secretary and, of course, most important of all, Mrs Thatcher. These talks resulted in agreement to send reinforcements at once and I am delighted to see how quickly they've arrived.
It also produced a general discussion about our situation in the face of Vietnamese refugees and complete support for the
/ contd