British Embassy Bangkok
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M Reilly Esq SEAD
FCO
HKK 243/4
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY
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- 6 JAN 1987
INDRA
ICER
i A
REGISTRY Action Takin
Aw Parton QILAD
Your reference
3012
Our reference
243/1
Date
17 December 1986
Dras Michan,
VIETNAMESE REFUGEES
1. I am sorry not to have commented sooner/on Robert Court's letter to Christopher Wilton in Tokyo of 14 November about recent correspondence between Sir Philip Goodhart, MP., and Mr Renton.
2.
We had an opportunity to see Sir Philip when he passed through Bangkok in September. He described his proposals along the lines of his subsequent letter to Mr Renton, and in return we gave him a background briefing on the refugee situation in Thailand, drawing his attention to the size and complexity of the problem here. Some of this briefing, and statistics we provided, are reflected in Sir Philip's paper of 28 October.
3. Sir Philip told us that his reasoning for putting forward the idea of resettling the Hong Kong Vietnamese refugees in the Philippines, with the Japanese providing the financial incentive, stemmed from his travels around the Far East. Having visited Japan, he believed the Japanese could be persuaded to donate sufficient money, to salve their conscience in lieu of taking refugees themselves, to make it worth the new Philippines Government's while to take those Vietnamese currently in Hong
an influx, Kong. He thought the Philippines likely to accept such for settlement on one of their virtually uninhabited islands, if the price was right. That they would be prepared to consider such an idea at all would be, according to Sir Philip, because these immigrants would be non-Muslim and help redress the expanding Muslim population in the Philippines. He thought Hong Kong would be happy simply to get rid of their refugees, and that while not necessarily what the refugees themselves might want, they would have little choice: it would be the Philippines or return to Vietnam. An additional bonus would be to discourage further exodus from Vietnam to Hong Kong because the option of Western resettlement had been removed.
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