INDO-CHINESE REFUGEES
i) GENERAL
ESSENTIAL FACTS
VIETNAMESE BOAT PEOPLE
CONFIDENTITYAJ
1.
Refugees continue to reach Hong Kong where there are now nearly 62,000, of whom about 7,000 have arrived since the Geneva meeting last July. There is some evidence of official Vietnamese connivance in the latest departures.
2. The Vietnamese have spoken of 1.8 to 2.5 million more people who wish to leave. At least 800,000 of these are ethnic Chinese,
whom the Vietnamese want to be rid of. In the longer term, we expect the Vietnamese to get them out.
3. Dr Waldheim's report to the UN General Assembly on the working of arrangements agreed at Geneva was debated last week in the Third Committee. The Vietnamese said they would continue to
maintain their Geneva commitments.
4.
Attempts to extend the UNHCR/Vietnam agreement of 31 May for orderly direct departure from Vietnam ("the 7-Point Programme") do not appear to have succeeded. Mr de Haan was the leading UNHCR negotiator of the original agreement. week (say 500 emigrants a month) is leaving. 10,000 a month to leave this way. The UNHCR office in Ho Chi Minh City does not seem to be operational.
Only one flight a
Vietnam called for
5. The situation was complicated by delay in Vietnamese approval of the UNHCR's nomination of a UK citizen, Mr Clarence, as the new representative in Hanoi (now agreed) and by US efforts to send consular officers to work in the Ho Chi Minh City UNHCR office to process applicants. The USA is prepared to accept up to 20,000 per year in this way.
CONFIDENTIAL
/CAMBODIAN