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SCR 1/4739/49.
CONFS
Note for the Record
HKK3
28/7 (163
Heeting with [NCNA: Támigrati China and Vietnamese Refugee
Vietnamese Refugees via China
it
1
I spoke today to Mr Tan of the NCNA following his recent return from China about the urgent problem of Vietnamese refugees arriving via China. He said the authorities in Canton were very concerned' grout the problem, but he could not yet give me a reply on our request to return a group of 214. I said we hoped there would be a positive reply as early as possible next week. I told him that there was an increasing danger of details of this problem leaking and that with the reduction in arrivals direct from Vietnam it would become increasingly obvious if a major component of the flow was now of refugees who had, in fact, come illegally from overseas Chinese farms. From 1 to 15 July the daily average of boat refugees had been 484, but this had dropped to 120 in the period 16 to 27 July. In the past two weeks nearly 1,000 Vietnamese refugees had arrived after leaving China illegally. Furthermore, we now had an extremely worrying report that there were 20,000 Vietnamese refugees in Beihai in Guanxi Province, who were actively considering leaving by boat for Hong Kong. Mr Tan agreed to report this new- information urgently.
Legal and Illegal Immigration from China
2.
I gave Mr Tan our latest arrival statistics and said we were concerned that the daily average at 27 July was now up to 155 with two recent days when over 200 had arrived. I was also concerned at the recent increase in arrivals of travellers on passports without onward visas. There were already over 40 this month compared with 19 in June. I agreed to pass him details of the declared destinations (see attached list). Mr Tan said he had raised this in Canton on the basis of cases I had earlier mentioned to him. The Canton authorities were investigating.
3.
I said that there had recently been a slight increase in the number of illegal arrests, but that we were more concerned with the fact that some of those arrested had claimed that they had found it easier to escape because night patrols were not evident, particularly on the western approaches to Hong Kong. These claims were to some extent borne out by a dramatic increase in the proportion of those arrested who had come by the Deep Ray route: this had been used by 95 out of 125 people arrested in a recent five day
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CONFIDENTIAL