back from Hong Kong. One must bear in mind that often the people who have managed to leave are people who have sold their belongings, people who are regarded by their fellow villagers as really quite
lucky, and now for them to come back and presumably to have to be
bought new homes, to be reintegrated into the agricultural
production system would arouse a certain amount of resentment among
those who have had to stick it out all this time.
Joanna Buchan:
The various refugee agencies trying to help the
families who arrive in Hong Kong and who are often faced with
appalling living conditions there are just as concerned with what they may find if they return to Vietnam. Martin Barber is Director
of the British Refugee Council. He believes that certain conditions
should be laid down before anyone is returned.
Martin Barber: That the Vietnamese Government is willing to give
complete guarantees that nobody will be persecuted or discriminated
against for having left the country and will not be discriminated
against in terms of taking up their old employment again when they
return. And secondly that the United Nations should have every
opportunity to check that those guarantees are in practice being
kept and that people who are returned are not discriminated against.
Joanna Buchan: Times have changed since the refugees, known as the
Boat People, received almost universal sympathy, and Nicholas
Hinton, Director General of the Save the Children Fund, believes
that much more advance planning must be done, and much more help should be given to Vietnam.
Nicholas Hinton: Well, I think we ought to realise that Hong Kong
has got the most enormous refugee problem. The long term solution,
and how long term long term is, is a good question. But the long
term solution must be bringing the Vietnamese people back into the
international community and that means the West and countries like
Britain offering aid and development assistance to Vietnam. That's
what we ought to be looking for. Repatriation for refugees is
nothing new and given, I think, reasonable conditions back in
Vietnam, it must be something that we should work for for those
Vietnamese refugees that have come to Hong Kong.
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