1
1
try
CONFIDENTIAL
DRAFT LETTER
*PITY CLASSIFICATION
Top Secret.
Secret.
Confidential.
Restricted.
Unclassified.
RIVACY MARKING
To:
B G Cartledge Esq
Private Secretary
No 10 Downing Street LONDON SW1
In Confidence
Type 1 +
། ་་་་
Mr Gomersall
Telephone No Lat.
Department
VIETNAMESE REFUGEES: MV RUDD BANK
You will be aware, in general terms, of the progress of our attempts to ensure that the refugees rescued in the South
flag merchant vessel Rudd Bank China Sea by the British
disembarked at the on 4 August are (owners: the Bank Line) earliest convenient opportunity and with minimal damage to The latest situation is briefly as the owners' interests.
follows.
The Rudd Bank has almost completed waters, and is now expected to leave
caril,
still have 119
authorities and our
its business in Chinese
on 31 August. In spite
offer of temporary or permanent of the Chinese Government's asylum to the 119 refugees on board, they have refused to
It is therefore almost certain that when the disembark.
or around Sunday 2 September Rudd Bank reaches Yokohama on to start a new time charter, she will Vietnamese on board. Both the Chinese Embassy in Peking have done what they could to convince refugees (mainly ex-officers of the South Vietnamese Armed Forces and their dependants) that they would not be damaging their longer-term interests in disembarking in China, and that they would be able to apply for resettlement elsewhere
But and be processed in the normal way if they did so..
to disembark in China they have presumably decided that presents them with risks comparable Vietnam to avoid.
to those they left
the
On 20 July we informed the Japanese authorities, in Tokyo and in London, of the probability that when the Rudd Bank
1
/reached
Dd 0532000 800M 5/78 HMSO Bracknell