SIR PHILIP GOODHART. M.P.
HOUSE OF COMMONS
LONDON SWIA OAA
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28.10.86
CLOSEL CAMPS IND
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There can be little doubt that the Vietnam refugee problem in Hong Kong and
elsewhere is getting worse. As one American expert said to me last week:
Vietnamese are suffering from compassion fatigue."
Mil 30
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"The
Many of the difficulties that we face are encapsulated in the attractive figure
of Nguyen Thi Liu, a 26-year-old seamstress from Haiphong, to whom I talked a few
days ago in the Bowring closed camp on the outskirts of Kowloon. She has two sisters,
living in San Francisco, and her recent journey in a fishing boat seems to have been
prompted by the news that one of her sisters had just acquired American nationality.
Nguyen Thi Liu clearly hopes that her link with a newly naturalised American will help her on her way to San Francisco. Michael Ho, our Controller of the refugee centres in Hong Kong, thought that this was improbable. If every Vietnamese citizen
with a naturalised relative in America was allowed into that country, the number of
potential migrants would come to several million. She hadn't been personally
threatened. She just wanted a better life and who can blame her.
With a little prompting, she talked about freedom. But it looks as though she
will be classified as an economic migrant rather than a political refugee.
Almost all the 2,000 new refugees who have arrived in Hong Kong this year come into
this category.
Most of the new arrivals are farmers or fisherman, along with their
children. The 100 percent increase in the number of new arrivals in Hong Kong this year seems to have been caused, in part, by an increase in taxation in Vietnam. Life
for the ordinary Vietnamese farmer seems to be getting even harder; but does
increased taxation constitute political repression?
In order to deter countless thousands of other Vietnamese from following in Miss Nguyen's wake, we are pursuing an unattractive policy that fluctuates between inhospitality and callousness. Unless she is exceptionally lucky, Miss Nguyen will spend the next few years locked in Bowring camp, a two acre site which now holds 1,000 detainees, but can take up to 1,400. The camp is clean. The food is perfectly adequate. The children are taught. Miss Nguyen will be able to work as
a seamstress, but she will have to share her small room with at least a dozen other