CODE 18,77
22
Reference......
FA 243/1
CONFIDENTIAL
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HKK 243||
Mr Williamson, HKGD
VIETNAMESE REFUGEES IN HONG KONG : UNHCR
1. M Casella (East Asia, UNHCR Geneva), stressing that he was not speaking formally on behalf of UNHCR, expanded on some of the ideas reported in UKMIS Geneva telegram no 71 at lunch yesterday with Mr Burns and me: Mr Landau, UNHCR London, was
host.
2.
M Casella started by saying that he had been warning his superiors of coming problems in Hong Kong. The primary cause was the American decision to take no more '4E' cases (i.e. no previous link with US) from Hong Kong while continuing to do so from other places of first asylum in South East Asia. This discrimination desired from the belief (or knowledge) that those now reaching Hong Kong were overwhelmingly single male ethnic Vietnamese from North Vietnam: people to whom the US 'owed nothing'. (We had previously understood the exclusion of 4E Vietnamese to be a general US policy, subject to minor local variations between countries of first asylum). M Casella's conclusion was that net numbers in Hong Kong would inevitably start to rise shortly.
3. There seemed to be two major elements in his further comments: a search for forms of 'humane deterrence',
'humane deterrence', and a search for ways of extricating UNHCR from the Hong Kong operation. They were not always obviously separate in his mind. The first line of argument was that the bulk of those now arriving in Hong Kong from North Vietnam were not refugees in the UNHCR sense: they were not subject to the various ethnic, political or religious discriminations affecting most from the South, nor before their departure, were they in fear for their life or liberty. Perhaps Hong Kong should therefore introduce a régime different from that elsewhere in South East Asia, and assess new arrivals for eligibility for refugee status. This could best be done under the procedures of the 1951 Geneva Convention (which has not yet been extended to Hong Kong): UNHCR would then continue to accept responsibility for resettling those considered eligible for refugee status, but the Hong Kong authorities could do what they liked with the rest, who would not be eligible for third country resettlement. This, if suitably publicised, should have some deterrent effect, which could be increased either by the severity of their subsequent handling in Hong Kong (M. Casella talked in terms of hard labour camps on Lantau), or even more so by an arrangement to move them to a detention facility in China. said with a straight face, I suspect that M Casella was mainly seeking to show how little interest UNHCR would have in the fate of such non-eligible refugees, and was not trying to find a
helpful practical way out for Hong Kong. But it is useful to be reminded that if Hong Kong decided to get tough, some sort of formal eligibility screening procedure based on 1951 Convention criteria could be a valuable measure to forestall any possible UNHCR criticism.
Although
CONFIDENTIAL
14. The