BY BAG
布政司署,
香港下亞麻舉道
* OUR REF: SCR 4/2091/78
* YOUR REF.:
M 'Simons Esq
S'E AD
F CO
17064
GOVERNMENT SECRETARIAT
LOWER ALBERT ROAD
TRONG KONG
HKK243
RECEIVED : 2
temper 1979
26Str 265P
ESK OFFKI INDEX
PA
VIETNAMESE BOAT REFUGEES IN HONG KONG
As the UN General Assembly gets under way, you and UKMIS New York may like to have our assessment of how things have moved, as seen from Hong Kong, since the Geneva Conference in July. Overall, our evidence here indicates that Vietnam has kept to her moratorium on boat departures announced at the
Conference.
People are still fleeing Southern Vietnam, but not under a government-authorized exodus.
2.
On the basis of UNHCR's figures (which we consider reliable) Hong Kong is now getting just about half of the continuing arrivals in the region. UNHCR quote 6,770 arrivals during August: of these we got some 3,200; with Singapore receiving about 1,500, or a quarter, all of them 'sea-rescue' cases. The remaining quarter were spread among the other first asylum countries. Clearly, however, the indirect arrivals via China are distorting these figures, for Hong Kong at least, and prevent them being a reliable guide to the continuing rate of departures from Vietnam.
3.
In rather more detail, Hong Kong's arrival pattern looks like this. In the period from the conclusion of the Conference in July to the 12 September, 6,305 Vietnamese refugees reached Hong Kong on sixty-eight boats and three merchant ships. Of these, the majority (5,075) were ethnic Chinese originally from Northern Vietnam, who came via China on twenty-seven boats: some of these
'coast-hopped' along the China coast, others (see below) have been Vietnamese who were actually settled for a period in China. The remainder (1,230) were ethnic Vietnamese or a few Chinese married to Vietnamese, who came on forty-one boats mostly from the central areas of Southern Vietnam or were rescued by three merchant ships off Southern Vietnam. The refugee arrivals comprised five types:
(a)
(b)
ethnic Vietnamese from Southern Vietnam who escaped clandestinely on motorized boats and sailed direct to Hong Kong (20%);
ethnic vietnamese from Southern Vietnam who left clandestinely on motorized boats and deliberately waited in international shipping lanes to be
'rescued' (3%);
CONFIDENTIAL
/(c)