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· South-East Asia (Refugees)
14 MAY 1985
imagine the sense of despair that leads to such a flood humanity, that drives people to leave home, family, possessions and familiar surroundings and to commit themselves to the uncertainty of becoming refugees. Thousands who trusted themselves to small boats perished at the hands of the cruel sea or pirates. Yet still they come. We have a moral duty to use every way open to us to get Vietnam not only to change its internal policies towards its citizens, but to enable those who have difficulty in obtaining exit visas, many of which must be paid for dearly through corrupt officials, to leave their country under the orderly departure programme. The British Committee for Refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, of which I have the privilege to be the chairman, has obtained permission from the royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea to erect on the banks of the Thames in London a telling memorial to those who perished at sea in the search for freedom. It will be a statue of a mother holding a baby emerging from the waves. We are raising funds for it now. It will be a constant reminder to us all that the price of freedom can be life itself.
In January, I visited Hong Kong and went to see refugees in Chi Ma Wan closed centre, Kai Tak transit centre and the Jubilee camp. The Hong Kong Government have coped remarkably well and with great endeavour and skill with well over 100,000 Vietnamese refugees who have arrived in a community which has a population density of 4,972 persons per sq km, which compares with 230 in the United Kingdom and 22 in the United States of America. In the last financial year, the Hong Kong Government spent about 100 million Hong Kong dollars, of which the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees provided about 20 million Hong Kong dollars. Many of them have been resettled in Western countries following the Geneva conference in July 1979. I am pleased that the British Government took a leading role in that conference and agreed to take a quota of 10,000. We now have about 19,000 Vietnamese refugees in the United Kingdom.
However, as at 1 December 1984 there still remained 12,258 Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong, although I understand that that figure has subsequently decreased. Hong Kong has already assimilated many refugees in its community, but there is now a need for further international response to help to clear this human log-jam. Mr. Paul Hartling the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, is in Hong Kong and now has called on the United Kingdom to take a few hundred more Vietnamese refugees from Hong Kong.
A similar plea has been made in the excellent and comprehensive report of Vietnamese refugees, produced by the Select Committee on Home Affairs. We eagerly await the Government response.
In giving evidence to the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, said:
"It is our responsibility to take the lead, as the Department in the Government responsible for Hong Kong, and to try to find a solution to it.”
He agreed that
"it must be a priority in terms of our responsibilities”.
I understand the view of the Home Office that there is no positive evidence that other countries would follow suit in taking more refugees, but no country is likely to give an undertaking in advance of any proposals by Britain.
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There is strong evidence to suggest that such a lead would be imitated by other countries. Canada has recently announced that it will take more refugees. In any event, it is worth while our doing so. The numbers are small. We took only 88 people from Hong Kong last year. Those refugees in Hong Kong with close family relatives in the United Kingdom number no more than 434, or 112 cases, on figures given to me when I visited Hong Kong. It is because these refugees have family links with the United Kingdom that no other country will have them. If we do' not take them, they will be condemned to remain in Hong Kong camps indefinitely.
What does that mean? Chi Ma Wan is a prison camp. The refugees there are "behind barbed wire", the phrase that forms the title of the policy statement issued by the British Refugee Council in December 1984. I was greatly impressed by the standards of cleanliness and hygiene, the quality and variety of the food and the excellent medical attention. I asked the resident doctor, who was English and had lived in Vietnam for a time, whether she was short of any supplies, and she said that she was not. However, the fact remains that these people cannot go outside the camp, unlike their fellow refugees, and sometimes relatives, in the open camps, who can go outside and work in the Hong Kong community. There were 2,502 in Chi Ma Wan when I was there, mainly aged 15 to 30, 73 of them under six months old. Some 90 had been born in the camp in 1984. About 100 are going on to resettlement in the United States, Canada and Australia.
Some 300 to 400 have been there since the closed camp, policy was started in July 1982 to deter further refugees from coming. These tend to be the most uneducated of the single young males. They are unlikely to be accepted by any country and will have to be assisted into Hong Kong society if no other country takes them in. In Kai Tak, I was told that 60 per cent. had not been taken because they refused a previous offer of resettlement because they were ill or had a criminal record. I have never been satisfied that the closed camp policy acted as a deterrent. In any event, if it ever did, its raison d'etre has disappeared. The numbers of refugees coming to Hong Kong have dropped off, not just as a result of the closed camp policy. The numbers were dropping off before July 1982, as the British Refugee Council has pointed out.
It is true that there was quite a dramatic diminution in numbers about that time, which has continued. However, it flies in the face of common sense to suggest that those who are prepared to risk losing everything, including their lives, in escaping from tyranny, are likely to be deterred by the thought that they would be incarcerated for a time in a closed camp. Natural optimism would entitle potential refugees to think that the period in such a camp would not be too long, even if they were also to discover the facts. In conjunction with the Select Committee on Home Affairs, I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to persuade the Hong Kong Government to phase out closed camps as soon as possible and allow the inmates to work in the community. I accept that our moral position of persuasion will be weak if we do not accept the fewer than 500 refugees whom I have mentioned, and if there is not a rolling programme of acceptances over a period to assuage the fears of the Hong Kong people that 12,000 refugees, speaking a different language and with a different culture, will no be integrated into Hong Kong society once they are able to work in it pending resettlement. The resettlement must be assumed.
UK
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