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1. What's New.0/4 2. Un autre 1079.
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GOVERNMENT SECRETARIAT
LOWER ALBERT ROAD
HKK430/1
KONG
6th Ventember 1979
Visit to Hong Kong by Ambassador Trimen
Mr. Turkmen the Secretary General's Special Representative for Humanitarian Affairs in South East Asia, made a brief visit to Hong Kong on his way from Bangkok to New York this week. Angelo Rasanayagam, UNHCR's representative here, accompanied him to a call
on the Governor on 3 September, I do not think anything very new emerged, but you may like to know briefly the main points
of discussion.
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2. HE nointed out that Hong Kong could not help comparing her own slow rate of offtake with the 260,000 places overell nlodrod at the Geneva Conference in July: We now expected to resettle only 14,000 or 15,000 boat refugees hy the end of 1979, and if the present rate of inflow continued (about 3,000 a month), the net decrease in the refugee nomlation here would be only minimal. Hong Kong was receiving two distinct flows from Vietnam: the slower arrivals by sailing boat from the North (though so far we had received no refugees who, on their own admission, had left the North since the Geneva Conference), and escapers from South Vietnam, of whom we have received 800 or 900 in the last six weeks.
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Mr. Turkmen said that he realised Hong Kong now had more boat refugees than any other first asylum country. The Secretary General was watching the situation closely, but there was little he himself could do about the root cause of the problem: he had no nowers to convene a political conference, hence his need to stress the humani- tarian aspects in convening the July Conference in Geneva. HE said that he saw the major problem in Vietnam itself as domestic rather than military: the real root causes behind the refuree outflow were economic and racial, and as long as these causes remained, people would still want to leave.
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Mr. Turkmen asked whether any of Hong Kong's boat arrivals had come on here after a period of resettlement in China. HE ronlied that while the refugees from South Vietnam (almost entirely in motor boats) made a direct crossing of the South China See, those from the North came via the Gulf of Tonkin, and very often made land-
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