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Refugees:
[LORDS]
[LORD CHITNIS.] Indeed, as far as I can make out, the conditions are deliberately kept deplorable to act as a deterrent to those who might otherwise feel that they could seek refuge in Hong Kong. But what it means is that for a family-of which there are very many-home is one segment of a two-tier bunk where there is no privacy and no normal life whatever. What it means is that thousands of people are being kept in what are simply overcrowded prisons. Indeed, the camps are run by the Correctional Services Department of the Hong Kong Government.
What will happen to these people, who are effectively trapped? They cannot go home. They would not want to and they would not be accepted. They cannot go to third countries. I should not think there is the option of absorbing them into the Hong Kong population, given what is to happen to the Colony. Britain itself will only allow very few people here for family reunions and is generally adopting a very restrictive policy. There is one small step, at least, which can be taken. The noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, referred to the 434 people (I think it is 435 but it is not a great difference) in the open and closed camps who have close relatives in this country. Could not these people, at least, be admitted here? I know of no great principle that would be breached and no floodgates that would be opened if that were allowed to happen. It might also be worth doing when we bear in mind that the Australians have certainly said that they will watch the British policy on the admission of people from Hong Kong to this country and will take from us a cue for deciding to what extent they should take more people into their country.
Leaving aside the problem of those few hundred. people. What of the others? What is going to happen to them? I did not raise this issue during the debate on Hong Kong last week because I presumed that the position would be sorted out by 1997; but when will it be, and how will it be?
4.18 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, is to be applauded for raising this issue. It is right that this House should deal with and express itself on matters such as this matters of great and widespread human suffering. I am tempted to follow the line of other speakers and relate some of my experiences over the past 35 years in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia and Africa where I have continually visited refugee camps. In fact, it is only three months ago since I was in Delhi visiting the refugee camps of the Sikh community after the tragedy which befell it last November. I do not intend to follow that line because we have written and we have talked for so long about the problem of refugees, the problem of hunger and the problem of suffering, that it seems to me to be more important to address ourselves to what can be done.
I here pay my tribute to the maiden speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Brentford, and take his speech as my theme. Unless we address ourselves, first, to the real causes of the refugee problem and, secondly, to the long-term remedies, we are really only talking to the converted.
Third World
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I would suggest that there are two central causes of the refugee problem. The first is civil conflict. It is unfortunate that when one talks of civil conflict, particularly in Africa, so many people in this country immediately have a picture of tribal warfare. I must say here that many sections of our media only perpetuate those myths. The latest example was the "Panorama” programme of the BBC on Monday, which, in purporting to describe the conditions in Zimbabwe and to analyse their causes, showed itself to be woefully ignorant and disgracefully biased.
I would take just two issues from that programme to paint up what I am speaking about. The British public watching that programme were misled into believing that the violence in the state of Zimbabwe is caused by traditional tribal conflicts between the Shona and Ndebele. Well, there ain't no Shona. There never has been such a thing as Shona tribe. There are Shona- speaking communities, which are not a tribe; and they have many tensions among them, and always have had. There are greater tensions among many of them than there are between Shona speakers and Ndebele speakers. The programme perpetuated an unhistorical myth.
Secondly, viewers were led to believe that the detentions without trial in Zimbabwe-which treatment we all detest-were in a category different from the detentions without trial in Northern Ireland. They are not. There is the same basic cause, which can be illustrated. There is the very great difficulty of bringing terrorists to trial when witnesses are in fear of their lives if they appear in court. I simply use that as an instance of how the British public are constantly misled as to the causes of civil conflict on the African continent and in other parts of the world.
So far as the issue of civil conflict and its bearing on the refugee problem is concerned, we must not forget that it was we Europeans who drew the totally artificial frontiers on the continent of Africa, cutting right through tribes. Mind you, that has one advantage. Many refugees in Africa are different from refugees in other parts of the world because when they cross a frontier they may still be with their own people. Nevertheless, the human suffering is increasing, as we have heard this afternoon. At the moment that is particularly illustrated by the situation in the Sudan, but it goes right through the Sahel area, the drought area, and right down through East and Central Africa. The number of refugees is increasing exponentially.
Then we must consider the form of de-colonisation. It was Lee Kuan Yew, the wise man from Singapore, who at a Commonwealth Conference a few years ago said that one of the biggest charges against the British policy of de-colonisation was that it left the colonies to come to independence without a basic system of security to preserve the states which the Europeans had created. Conflicts are inevitable.
I would just remind the House that the problem of refugees should not be foreign to us. Europe has suffered from a refugee problem at least since the beginning of the century. In fact, I remember that the very first prize which I won at school was for an essay on the work of the League of Nations among refugees and in resettling them in Europe after the First World War.