LINCOLN HANNAH LIMITED MEDIASCAN
Dy Telegraph
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Hong Kong 'forced refugees to move
By Christopher Lockwood in Hong Kong A UNITED NATIONS official accused Hong Kong yesterday of forcing 48 Vietnamese boat people to move to a new detention centre. Mr Robert van Leeuwen, Hong Kong director for the UN High Com- missioner for Refugees, said they were moved at dawn with no warning, and force was used in violation of an agreement between the government and the UNHCR.
Hong Kong officials said only that there had been "scuffles", and "minor scratches" had been sus- tained. Sir David Wilson, Gov. ernor of Hong Kong, is to order an investigation.
The boat people, whose appeals to be classified as genu- ine political refugees had been rejected, were moved from Chi Ma Wan detention centre to Phoenix House on Tuesday.
There is speculation that Phoenix House, formerly a “half-way house” for prisoners, is being used to confine a group of boat people who will be the first batch to be forcibly repatriated.
But such rumours also circu- lated in July, when 14 boat people were moved to Phoenix House. They are still there, Britain having so far failed to finalise a deal with Vietnam on mandatory repatriation.
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The government's explana- tion was that the boat people had been moved so they could be "intensively counselled", with a view to persuading them to return of their own accord.
Mr van Leeuwen said ́other boat people were traumatised and angry after the dawn raid. "People in Chi Ma Wan were terrified," an aid worker there said.
He also said the incident had come at a bad time, because multinational negotiations on the future of the boat people were still under way.
UNHCR figures show more than 2,000 boat people are wait- ing to return to Vietnam after volunteering to do so, and 150 more are applying each week. That is significantly more than the rate of new arrivals.
But because of bottlenecks at the Vietnamese end, the agen- cy's plans to run return flights into Vietnam every two weeks have not materialised.
Mr van Leeuwen said it was "premature" to talk of manda- tory repatriation just as volun- tary repatriation was starting to prove successful.
Thursday 02-Nov-89
Hong Kong and Britain are officially committed to the idea of mandatory repatriation in the near future, deeply unpopular though this will be in Britain and America.
But if mandatory repatriation is to prove even minimally acceptable, it is considered essential that it be well supervised.
In practice, the only agency capable of doing this is the UNHCR. But Mr van Leeuwen said it would not monitor returns until the principle of voluntary return had been given time to succeed.
That is the position of Amer. ica, whom neither the UNHCR nor Vietnam will dare to offend.
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THE TIMES
Hong Kong trip to hire 25 nurses
Cambridge health authority officials are to visit Hong Kong next week to recruit 25
nurses.
They will care for elderly and mentally ill patients, specialities in which there is a national shortage. The nurses will be paid agreed health service rates. The 14-day trip will cost £3,500 and is, the authority says, "much more cost-effective than national advertising".
A similar and successful trip was made to Dublin in 1987. Officials are confident of attracting suitable staff as many in the colony prepare to leave before it reverts to China in 1997.
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