A
BY BAG
布政司署
港下亞厘畢道
AKK 24314
* OUR REF.: CP 2/482~177
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY NO. 51
來函檔號 YO
* Y6 APR 1980
DESK OFFICER
REGISTRY
INDEX
PA
SE. A
Action Taken
tiit_Esq
وامت
A DAW isly
RESTRICTED
An Monaca Zish
سم
ió lin
DA J15.4
GOVERNMENT SECRETARIAT
LOWER ALBERT ROAD
HONG KONG
10 April 1980
Aww Stut does not believe
the picture in in bad as throw paints but I find it diffimet not to become inenasingly concemd.
We could woye out wives I de more
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by way
14.4
28
of whring won't maple fm HK, int this will wound show am andrarent record, we really mand's hush arti preuve I subret dit my of the ribagues have a
eye make for is permanent more
and will it wont t VIETNAMESE BOAT REFUGEES IN HONG KONG: REPORT ON THE FIRST QUARTER OF 1980
in the MO,
You will have seen the figures to the end of March in AKK 2431 Our telno 488 of 7 April. They are depressing. At the time of the Geneva conference in July 1979 we had 66,000 boat refugees, roughly 28% of the regional total. Now, almost 9 months later, there are still 44,000 refugees here, about 46% of the regional total. (The current estimate is based on incomplete regional figures to the end of March).
2.
15
isla.
The low proportion of resettlement places going to refugees in Hong Kong which was such a marked feature of 1979 is continuing - and worsening - this year. The deterioration is not just statistical. Discrimination against refugees in Hong Kong is now more obvious in that most of the factors cited by UNHCR and resettlement countries last year to explain why refugees in other places of first asylum needed help more urgently no longer apply: length of time spent in camps, conditions of camps, dangers of being towed back to sea, local pressures these are now less applicable or should work in favour of refugees who have now been in Hong Kong for longer than elsewhere.
3.
There is, however, an added reason for this dismal First Quarter report. Two of the major resettlement programmes for refugees here have fallen significantly short of their targets. The Americans planned to take 2,000 a month and have fallen short of this by 30%; while the UK target of 2,600 fell short by 41%. The prospects for improvement in the US programme are limited because a significant proportion of the US quota here will continue to be destined to go to the US via the Bataan RPC; and there are few signs of work there progressing fast enough to allow movements to take place as planned, far less to catch up on the backlog. It will also be increasingly difficult to persuade refugees to go to Bataan as a result of letters back from the first group to go from here, describing the unpleasant voyage on the LST and disappointment at conditions in Bataan.
4.
For the UK quota we must simply hope that the promised speed-up is sufficiently dramatic to undo some of the damage. Talking at the weekend to the Guardian's Geneva correspondent, Iain Guest, 1 was dismayed by his unprompted comment that at other places in the region which he has recently visited, US, Canadian, Australian, French, FRG and UNHCR officials had all made disparaging remarks
in pressing for the
UK!
about the contrast between, Ebe. Ukis speraY
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/Geneva.
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