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Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
2KK 243/4
From The Minister of State
23 October 1988ECEIVER
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- 3 NOV 1986
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Dear Seoffrey, дебургу.
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Thank you for your letter of 6 October to Tim Eggar
on behalf of your constituent Mr John Collingwood of 22 Birwood Park Road, Walton in Thames, Surrey, KT12 5LJ, about Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong.
I should say first that no refugees in Hong Kong are "shut up in cages". Your constituent is presumably referring to Hong Kong's closed refugee camps: in these camps refugees sleep in tiered bunks but they are able to move about freely within the camp boundaries. Conditions are not excessively crowded, particularly when compared with the conditions in which many Hong Kong people live.
The
Your constituent also seems to be mistaken about the number of people in closed camps. At present there are some 4,900 refugees in such camps in Hong Kong out of a total of 8,400 Vietnamese refugees in the territory. camps are run by the Hong Kong Government with the assistance of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and voluntary agencies such as the Save the Children Fund. Every effort is made to run the camps in as humane a manner as is possible in the circumstances. Mr Collingwood's figure of 12,000 represents the total refugee population in Hong Kong in 1982, when the "closed camp policy" was introduced for new arrivals in order to discourage Vietnamese from setting out for Hong Kong at a time when the territory's refugee population was increasing rapidly. Once the outflow from Vietnam has effectively ceased, we shall be able to discontinue a policy which we and the Hong Kong Government have always intended to be a temporary response to very difficult circumstances.
Mr Collingwood mentions Australia and New Zealand as countries which might resettle more Vietnamese refugees. It is of course for those countries themselves to speak about their policies towards refugees and what they have already done, but I think I may say that both have been very generous over a number of years in providing resettlement places for Vietnamese refugees. Following our decision last year to accept in the United Kingdom some 500 further Vietnamese refugees from Hong Kong, we again urged both these countries, and some 20 others, to take more refugees from Hong Kong. I am glad to be able
Geoffrey Pattie Esq MP
House of Commons
LONDON SWLA OAA
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