1.
Ihaydan Billo
ок:
OK: that we have to remember that Fowing camp (i
helped to design it!) LEE
Un Barton
Mr Layde
Perhaps tul
вые коль
kiv für fülerve
be a
a
Layden truck len defensuse
about loved comps?
cunes
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BOIPAD
FROM: Sir W Harding
W37 233 3579
DATE: 12 March 1986
CC:
PS
PS/Mr Renton
Mr Adams, SEAD Mr Lever, UND
VIETNAMESE REFUGEES: CLOSED CAMPS IN HONG KONG
1.
Mr Amy, MVD
I have just seen your submission of today's date covering a draft reply to a letter from Lord Ennals commenting on the Government's White Paper in response to the SCORRI report on Vietnamese refugees. While I do not dissent from the terms of the draft, I ought to record my own impressions derived from a visit to one of the closed camps in Hong Kong last month. On 24 February I visited the so-called Bowring Closed Centre at Tun Mun in the New Territories. I attach a descriptive note on it, together with similar notes on other refugee centres in the territory. My overall impression, like Mr Hartling's, was positive Given the fact that the camp is an old army installation and that it is entirely surrounded by an 18-feet-high chain-linked fence double in places, the atmosphere inside is far from disagreeable. The camp is kept scrupulously clean, and the living quarters of the refugees, though rudimentary, are satisfactory to their needs. There were no policemen or armed guards in sight, save one woman policeman on the main gate. Many civilian helpers were in evidence, some of them British. The refugees themselves seemed for the most part in very good spirits - much as I had witnessed in the refugee camps on the Thai-Cambodian border and rather better than my admittedly fleeting impression of a refugee camp outside Peshawar. Naturally, the refugees' thoughts are much concentrated on the prospects for their transfer to another country hopefully the Mecca of the United States - and the opportunity to start a new life. But, apart from this, their general mental and physical health appeared to me to be very good and this impression was confirmed by the medical staff.
2.
I was told that Lord Chitnis had recently visited the camp and criticised the absence of opportunities for the inmates to organise their own lives and engage in useful work, though in other respects he agreed that the facilities were as good as could be expected in the circumstances. The point that he and other critics of the closed camps seem to miss is that the Hong Kong authorities themselves would be delighted to be rid of them, but have to maintain their existence in order to deter a new onrush of refugees from Viet Nam. There is the further point that
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