SPEECH BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH
AFFAIRS AT GENEVA ON FRIDAY 20 JULY, 1979
HUD 243/11 нит
FA24312
30 JUL 1979
Mr Secretary-General, High Commissioner, Ex dot tencies7
I should like first to express my Government's gratitudėto
you, Mr Secretary-General, for inviting us here today following
my Prime Minister's appeal on 30 May. I pay tribute as well to
the High Commissioner for Refugees, whose work has helped us
focus on the stark realities of this unprecedented crisis.
Not in this generation have such vast numbers of people risked
death and destitution to leave their country in the hope of finding
refuge abroad. You have seen the misery of those who are waiting
in Thailand after crossing the frontiers of Laos and Kampuchea
in their tens of thousands. I have just returned from Hong Kong,
where over sixty-six thousand people have found temporary sanctuary
in that tiny and over-crowded territory after perilous journeys
in their unseaworthy craft.
We can have no doubt about the scale of human suffering involved
I have seen it for mys f. Our aims at this conference must be
to find ways to
to alleviate that suffering: firstly by getting
the Government of Vietnam to exercise a humane policy in respect
of its own people and secondly by finding ways of sharing
throughout the international community the unfair burden which is
now being borne by Hong Kong and the countries of South East Asia.
We do not think that this purpose can be served by raking over
past history.
It has, however, been alleged that the refugees are bourgeois
dropouts who cannot adjust to the new Vietnamese reality; that
they did not have to leave; that they left illegally; that it
is all the consequence of colonialism or a plot of the Western
capitalists and the Chinese.
Mr Secretary-General, these arguments are heartless, moreover
they are irrelevant. It is not the practice of British Ministers
to comment on the internal affairs of other countries, but I am
bound to wonder what lies behind this exodus, and why tens of
thousands of men, women and children perhaps as many as the
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