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(b) Involuntary repatriation to Vietnam
The Hong Kong Government has proposed this on
several occasions
in
a paper sent
since 1982. Their proposals were set out in detail with Sir P Haddon-Cave's letter of 9 February 1984 to Mr Donald,
then AUSS. (Letter and paper attached). The proposals are based on
the premise that the majority of arrivals are now not true refugees,
and they should therefore be treated in the same way as persons from other countries seeking to enter Hong Kong: new arrivals would be
screened, and those who lacked either proper documentation of convincing grounds on which to claim asylum would be treated as illegal immigrants and returned to Vietnam. Only those able to provide convincing grounds for asylum as refugees would be granted it. This would be in keeping with Hong Kong's treatment of illegal immigrants from China, who have been repatriated since 1982.
14. Option 13(a) above would certainly be effective. However the
argument that led Ministers to decide against it in 1984 remains as
strong today.
15. Option 13(b) should be a much more effective deterrent to
would-be arrivals than the closed centre policy. It could allow
Hong Kong to open up the closed centres. It would be popular with
Hong Kong's Chinese population. Its principal drawbacks are:
(a)
Likely human rights objections to involuntary repatriation; unlikely that Vietnamese government would give assurances of humane
treatment.
to
(b) Unlikely that Vietnamese would take them back. When the UNHCR, Mr Poul Hartling, visited Hanoi in September 1984, the Vietnamese
Foreign Minister said that if certain Vietnamese did not
participate in the work of reconstruction and left Vietnam, there
was ΠΟ reason why Vietnam should take them back. He said that
Vietnam would consider applications on a case-by-case basis; given the large numbers involved, this statement, even if sincere, me ans
very little (Mr Hartling only raised the question of voluntary
repatriation, although we had asked him also to raise involuntary
repatriation; but the Vietnamese cannot be expected to have a more forthcoming attitude towards the latter).
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