Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
PTAADR
FILE
Telephone 01-
270 2651
Ms Clare Hanbury
10 Shamrock Street Clapham
LONDON
SW4 6HE
Your reference
HKD 243/4
Our reference
Date
20 April 1988
APR 1988
Y
Wesen Taken
Dear Ms Hanbury,
46.
42
Thank you for your letter of 27 March enclosing a copy of your report: "Vietnamese Refugees in Hong Kong's Closed Camps". We met on 5 April to discuss the report, and I thought it would be helpful if I set down a few comments on it.
We welcome the report as a very constructive document which pulls together a number of the difficult problems raised by the Vietnamese boat people in Hong Kong. A lot of the points you discuss are very detailed, and as I indicated to you during our meeting they would probably best be discussed with officials in the Hong Kong Government. Many of your suggestions are already under consideration in Hong Kong in the context of the proposals on education of children, and vocational training and work programmes for those in closed centres. I understand that the Hong Kong Government is also looking into specific points of criticism you have raised about conditions and treatment of those in the centres.
As your report points out, the renaissance of the ODP is to be welcomed since it is an attempt to tackle the problem at source with the aim of reducing the number of people who flee Vietnam to make the dangerous sea journey to Hong Kong.
Arrivals under the ODP are people who meet the UK's standard family reunion criteria under our immigration rules and who are therefore entitled to enter the UK. The rate of departure under this programme is controlled by the Vietnamese authorities. The programme was intended as a means of facilitating a legitimate channel for departures from Vietnam for those eligible, thereby reducing the pressure for illegal departures. By contrast, our present commitment to take 468 Vietnamese refugees from Hong Kong is on the basis of special criteria outside the normal immigration rules. I would like to stress that the ODP is not at the expense of resettlement of refugees from Hong Kong.
Your report also calls for Britain to take an active and vocal lead in all international action and to concentrate on Hong Kong's refugees rather than any others. Britain has in fact played a major role in dealing with this problem. The 1979 Geneva