•ĻIKK JA3/4
RECEIV
“GISTRY
13 NOV 1986
SIR PHILIP GOODHART, M.P.
HOUSE OF COMMONS
Acton taken
LONDON SWIA OAA
My heart. 1)
A
A
L
reply is islande
28.10.86
CLOSED CAMINS 442 CUSTE
HEARTS
い心
Mil 50%
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."
"The
Many of the difficulties that we face are encapsulated in the attractive figure of Nguyen Thi Liu, a 26-year-old seamstress from Hainong, to whom I talked a few
She has two sisters days ago in the Bowring closed camp on the outskirts of Kowloon. 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
She hadn't been personally potential migrants would come to several million. threatened. She just wanted a better life and who can blame her.
But it looks as though she With a little prompting, she talked about freedom. 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 Life year seems to have been caused, in part by an increase in taxation in Vietnam. for the ordinary Vietnamese farmer seems to be getting even harder; increased taxation constitute political repression?
but does
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
Unless she is exceptionally lucky, Miss Nguyen inhospitality and callousness. will spend the next few years locked in Bowring camp, a two acre site which now
The food is holds 1,000 detainees, but can take up to 1,400. The camp is clean. perfectly adequate. The children are taught.
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