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MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE
[Continued
(ii) There is increasing evidence that other countries are refusing to accept refugees from Hong Kong, or accepting reduced quotas, because they feel that the UK, as the metropolitan power, should take the lead. This point is dealt with in more detail in Part II below.
II WHETHER THE EFFECT OF ÅDMITTING to Britain even a Small Number of Vietnamese FROM THE CAMPS IN HONG KONG WOULD BE TO ENCOURAGE OTHer Countries to Take LARGER NUMBERS FROM Those Camps:
1. There is the following evidence that the lack of a further UK quota for resettlement of Vietnamese refugees from Hong Kong provides a pretext for other governments to direct their main resettlement effort towards those places of first asylum where their own direct political interests are greater.
(a) Comparative resettlement statistics
The following table shows that there is a wide disparity between the number of Vietnamese refugees resettled from Hong Kong and the number resettled from other places of first asylum, in proportion to their total refugee populations:
HONG KONG MALAYSIA
INDONESIA
THAILAND
PHILIPPINES
SINGAPORE
Population of Vietnamese Refugees Awaiting Resettlement on 1 January 1984
12,770
10,077
6,036
8,057
2,236
286
Departures
to Countries of Resettlement Jan-Aug 1984
1,940
7,165
4,475
4,646
1,455
422
It is clear from these figures that Hong Kong comes low on the list of priorities of the main resettlement countries.
(b) Statements_by_officials of resettlement countries and of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(i) An official of one of the Governments who have been important recipients of refugees, told the Hong Kong representative to the 1983 Executive Committee meeting of the UNHCR that his Government would not raise its quota of refugees from Hong Kong until HMG took more, and advised that Hong Kong should press for this. (ii) In March 1984 officials from the same Government said that their ministers would want to see a new quota from the UK--however small-before showing a willingness to consider increasing significantly their off-take from Hong Kong.
(iii) Officials of another such Government told FCO officials in January 1984 that an increasingly large number of refugees in Hong Kong did not meet their criteria. The Hong Kong refugee problem should be "internationalised" with the UK Government taking the lead. It would be hard for the Government concerned to raise its refugee quotas if others did not.
(iv) An official of the same Government said at a meeting of resettlement countries in Geneva in July 1984 that his Government had taken almost all the refugees it could from Hong Kong under its present rules, and that in the absence of a UK quota it was not prepared to seek to amend the regulations concerning off-take from Hong Kong. (v) UNHCR officials have expressed concern, in the light of the UK's responsibility for Hong Kong, at our refusal to take more refugees. They consider that the lack of a new UK quota is one reason for the decline in resettlement places offered by other major resettlement countries and have emphasised the difficulty of persuading other countries to take more refugees from Hong Kong in the absence of a lead from the UK.