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the order of the day, but Hong Kong officials may have taken
the opportunity to revive their ideas of screening the
arrivals of boat- people to you have sexy from gring
3.
Heat we are asking them for clasticate of the Disnes
Although the 1979 Conference agreed to consider all
boat-people as refugees, it remains the prerogative of
individual states to accept arrivals as refugees or reject
them as illegal immigrants. But you may reassure Moussalli
that as far as Hong Kong is conerned this is a decision that
will be taken here, and that until we advise UNHCR otherwise
he can assume that we shall continue to deal with boat-people
on the basis of the 1979 conference arrangements.
4.
We share Hong Kong's concern that tighter US admissions
criteria have to some extent undermined the consensus on
.
ranted in ho Damme Ame bobmon's
which the handling of boat refugees since 1979 has been based.
But we also agree with your view (para 5) that so far the
closed camp policy has proved in the circumstances a valuable
Howeve deterrent to the continuing outflow. But this is really only
politically defensible because it is sanctioned, albeit '
contre coeur by UNHCR. We see no point in Hong Kong devising
further 'deterrents' for which neither we nor the Americans
can see any political justification, and which are almost
certain to be disowned by UNHCR who
d
1à
we occasionally remind
Hong Kong still have responsibility for resettling those
refugees already in the territory.
5.
3.]
We shall be putting this clearly to Hong Kong when
discussing with them in the coming weeks where we go from
here. But you will have seen from the record of our talks
with Funseth that a consensus seems now to be emerging that
countries of first asylum in the region will have to sit
on
a backlog of anything up to 10-15,000 cases and that this
will be the most effective defensible deterrent to continued
Some form of voluntary repatriation should be
emigration.
liter of $5 Dec
Swana
ang
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