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WPQ: MR KEITH BEST: VIETNAMESE REFUGEES IN INDONESIA
Mr Best is Chairman of the British Committee for Indo-Chinese Refugees. He recently asked 2 PQs about human rights abuses
in Vietnam. Concurrent with this PQ he has put down six further questions on Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong also for written reply on 17 February.
It is not clear what has prompted this question. We have had no recent contact with the Indonesian Government on Vietnamese refugee questions. Indonesia currently has the third largest load of unresettled Vietnamese refugees (6,500) in the region, compared with 9,100 in Hong Kong and 8,500 in Malaysia. The continuing flow of Vietnamese refugees to Indonesia is a source of friction between the Indonesian and Vietnamese Governments.
Last year the UN High Commissioner for Refugees approached us through our Embassy in Jakarta asking whether we might accept 25 "long stayers" in Palau Galang Camp. We put this to the Home Office. Mr Waddington was unable to meet this request given the priority which the UK continues to give to the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong.
One of the recommendations of the report of the Home Affairs Sub-Committee on Race Relations and Immigration published last April was that the criteria for allowing Vietnamese refugees, currently in camps in Hong Kong or elsewhere, to join family members already in the UK, should be relaxed. In the White Paper published in reply last September, HMG agreed that it would accept all those Vietnamese in Hong Kong camps (about 420) who would become eligible under the new criteria, and the small number (about 60) in other camps in South East Asia, provided
that those concerned wished to come here and their relatives in
in the UK were prepared to sponsor them. British refugee agencies are now investigating sponsors in the country, trying to identify those in South East Asian camps who would be eligible. We do not know yet whether any of these would come from Indonesian
camps.
SOUTH EAST ASIAN DEPARTMENT
12 FEBRUARY 1986
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