CONFIDENTIAL
other development agencies are in a position to take over.
Indo-China and Hong Kong
12
1.
Countless others
Perhaps the toughest crisis UNHCR has had to face is in Indo-China. In 1976 the General Assembly asked UNHCR to take responsibility for Indo-Chinese displaced persons who had started
A to pour out of the area in 1975 following the fall of Saigon. second wave began in the spring of 1978. By September 1979 some 350,000 refugees were stranded in camps and small islands stretching from Malaysia to the Philippines. were losing their lives trying to escape by sea or by land. Civilian populations fleeing war and famine were denied asylum and turned back to the sea or across borders. Piracy claimed many victims. Ships, ignoring international law and age-old maritime custom, refused to come to the assistance of refugee boats in distress on the high seas. The refusal by admittedly hardpressed
· South East Asian states of even temporary asylum to these tragic people was in stark contrast to the performance of Hong Kong, which bore much of the brunt, and never turned back a genuine refugee. UNHCR have complained privately about the secretive manner in which Vietnamese refugees coming to Hong Kong via China were returned there and urged us to exempt from this compulsory
Hong Kor repatriation those with family ties in third countries. complied partly with these representations in subsequent cases though not to the extent that UNHCR would have wished.
13 It was against this background that the Prime Minister call
This for an International Conference on Indo-Chinese refugees. took place in Geneva in July 1979 and you, My Lord, attended it. It brought the situation under control by Vietnam's acceptance c a French-inspired "moratorium" on the export of refugees. The Conference also produced offers of 260,000 resettlement places a $200 million in cash and kind. It was followed by a UNHCR meeti on rescue at sea of the major maritime nations. Since 1975, 370,000 Indo-Chinese have been resettled but there still remain 220,000 in the camps of South East Asia.
14
The implications of such a moratorium for the basic principles of UNHCR activities are complex. They are linked wit
/th