Mr D Mellor
HM Ambassador
British Embassy
Asenction
PARAGUAY
DRAFI, Mur segala pubg EAD.
Grateful for any
CONFIDENTIAL
Comments
July 1983
Ainia Wathen
25/7
Miss Walker
HK.D.
CC SAND, UND.
POSSIBLE RESETTLEMENT OF VIETNAMESE REFUGEES FROM HONG KONG
1.
We were interested to see that the Paragayan Government have expressed willingness in principle to accept a group of Vietnamese refugees from Hong Kong (paragraph 10 of your letter ref 240/1 of 18 May to Adrian Sindall). We have sought the preliminary views of the Hong Kong Government on the feasibility of trying to select a group of refugees likely to meet the Paraguayans' criteria for acceptance. I enclose copies of our letter to Hong Kong and their reply.
2. Selection of suitable refugees may well prove difficult. However, in view of the serious difficulties Hong Kong faces (there are currently just over 13,000 Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong awaiting resettlement in third countries), we are anxious that all possibilities for resettlement should be pursued. I should therefore be grateful if you could raise the subject again informally with the Paraguayan authorities, and ask them how many refugees they would envisage accepting, and how soon they would be able to receive them. It would also be useful to know what type of agriculture the refugees would be most likely to be involved in, to enable the UNHCR to make the most appropriate selection (paragraph 2 of Mr Mason's letter of 6 July refers).
3.
I should be grateful for your assessment of how well any Vietnamese who go to Paraguay are likely to be treated by the authorities there, given that Paraguay has a generally poor human rights record. HMG could obviously come under strong criticism if it were thought that refugees from Hong Kong were being resettled in Paraguay only to be persecuted in the same way they would have been