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FROM: DATE:
Mr Edwards, Legal Advisers
A Godson, SEAD
Max Skater +PA
21/10
7 October 1988 CC: Mr Footman, HKD
VIETNAMESE BOAT PEOPLE IN HONG KONG
1.
We spoke about Mr Colvin's minute of 5 October to Mr Hum (copy attached). It seems that the Vietnamese argue:
a) that the definition of a refugee was expanded by virtue of the 1969 OAU Convention Governing The Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems In Africa (copy attached) and
b)
that individuals have the right to select their own place of resettlement.
2. We need to have a firm line to rebut these suggestions when we hold talks with the Vietnamese next week (11/12 October) on the boat people problem in Hong Kong. I should be grateful for Legal Advisers' views on the following suggested form of words.
We do not, of course, challenge the right of people to leave and return to their country of origin of their own free will.
But it is established and long standing international practice for the receiving state to decide who shall enter their territory and to determine those who qualify as refugees.
Hong Kong's screening procedures for identifying refugees are fully consistent with the procedures and criteria established by the UNHCR in 1951.
It is consistent with international law and practice that those determined not to be refugees are liable to be sent back to their country of origin.
If Necessary
The OAU Convention deals specifically, as its title says, with problems in Africa.
Its provisions have not been extended to other parts of the world and it is therefore not relevant to the problem of boat people in Hong Kong.
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In any case the Convention itself recognises (Article
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