FILE
33
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
PR1ASK
Andrew Clark Esq
General Secretary
Quaker Peace & Service
Friends House
Euston Road
LONDON NW1 2BJ
3 April 1986
HMM 243/4
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY
- 4 APR 1986
Der Dr Clark,
DESK OFFICER
PA
REGISTRY Action Taken
of 17
I have been asked to reply to your letter March to Sir Geoffrey Howe, about Vietnamese refugees and the closed camps in Hong Kong.
are
I was pleased to learn that Quaker Peace and Service welcome the decision to relax the criteria for family reunion in respect of Vietnamese refugees already in camps in places of first asylum, mostly in Hong Kong. FCO, Home Office and Hong Kong Government officials in close contact with the British Refugee Council and the voluntary agencies involved to try to ensure that we able to maintain a resettlement rate of about 40 family reunion cases from Hong Kong each month.
are
a
You may not yet know that following the Home Affairs Committee's
that recommendation
Hong Kong accept proportion of the ethnic Chinese in the open camps, Hong
(which Kong
has already absorbed 14,500 displaced Indo-Chinese since 1975) has agreed to resettle up to 250 ethnic Chinese refugees from amongst the longest stayers. This
significant given the population pressures in Hong Kong and the difficulty for the Hong Kong Government
being
Vietnamese seen to treat refugees better than illegal immigrants from China (who are normally returned to China
China upon being discovered, although they may have relatives in Hong Kong).
is gesture
of
made by
You refer in your letter to the comments Lord Ennals in his letter to the Secretary of State of 7 As the February about the closed camps in Hong Kong. Government have repeatedely said, neither we nor the Hong Kong Government
the closed regard
camps policy
we
as
a
satisfactory or desirable one; it is a temporary measure that
circumstances would wish to remove as soon as allow us to do so. The Select Committee itself commented
for introducing
that
"the
reasons
closed
camps
are
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