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Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
RECE AND
From The Minister of State
PA Closed Comps
де
6 August 1986,
HKK 243/4
REGISTRY
27 AUG 1986
CEM
HEGISTRY
Action Taken
Jar Martin
Your assistant wrote to Geoffrey Howe on 24 July asking for information about conditions in the camps in Hong Kong for Vietnamese refugess, and the way in which the refugees are treated.
Hong Kong currently has some 8,500 Vietnamese refugees awaiting resettlement, more than almost any other place in South East Asia. Following the first major influx of refugees in 1979, newly arriving refugees were initially acommodated in open camps, from which they were able to seek outside employment. At first they were resettled reasonably quickly.
However by 1982 the rate of resettlement decreased markedly; and the Hong Kong Government saw no alternative but to introduce "closed camps" in order to discourage would-be refugees from travelling to Hong Kong. Refugees who have arrived in Hong Kong since 1982 have been accommodated in these closed camps. They are not allowed to leave them, other than in exceptional circumstances, until they depart from Hong Kong for resettlement overseas.
This policy has markedly reduced the numbers arriving in the territory. We and the Hong Kong Government have always regarded the closed camps as a temporary arrangement which should cease to be necessary once the flow of illegal departures from Vietnam has reduced to a trickle.
Within the constraints of the closed camp policy, the Hong Kong Government seeks to do all that it can to make conditions in the camps as humane as possible. It provides the refugees with accommodation, food, medical attention, and educational, recreational, and vocational training facilities, and employs specially recruited and trained staff to work in the camps. Voluntary agencies provide a range of social services to refugees in each of the camps and representatives from among the refugees are able to discuss various aspects of camp life at daily meetings with the staff. The last United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Mr Poul Hartling, visited one of the closed camps in mid-1985 and said that, although
The Rev Martin Smyth BA BD MP
House of Commons
LONDON
SWIA OAA