CONFIDENTIAL
CONFIDENTIAL
VIETNAMESE BOAT PEOPLE
The Committee considered a Memorandum by the Secretary of State
for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (OD(89)9) on the Vietnamese
boat people. They also had before them a letter from the Chief Secretary Treasury to the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary
dated 6 June 1989.
June
THE FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH SECRETARY said
that the
there were now
problem of V ethames
ese boat people in Hong Kong was of long standing but had now reached critical proportions;
over 38,000 Vietnamese in Hong Kong and the total was increasing
by
much as
as 1,200 a day. This had created severe practical
problems for the Colony and had been damaging to morale. The United Kingdom had spend gnificant sums to alleviate the problem,
but with only palliative effect. The task at the International
Conference on Indo-Chinese Refugees
Refugees at Geneva on 13/14 June,
which he
he would be attending would be to provide relief for Hong
Kong by establishing a Regional Processing Centre elsewhere for
genuine refugees and to secure-
return of non-refugees to
Vietnam.
Short of physically preventing arriving boat people from landing in Hong Kong and elsewhere,
latter objective could only
be achieved by persuading the Government of Vietnam to accept
their return on
on a non-voluntary basis. This in turn would act as a
disincentive to further outflows from vietnam
from Vietnam once it became known
that Hong Kong was not an automatic haven of refuge. It would
however be hard to persuade the United States necessity for compulsory repatriation because
the Vietnamese stemming from the Vietnam
had to be made.
Government of the
heir attitudes to
War
the
attempt
CONFIDE
In discussion, the following points were made
The consequence of the policy of first asylum,
other
countries in the area did not observe, was to burden Hong
a.
Kong with responsibility for accommodating
aliens for whom neither the Colony nor the
had any responsibility,
large
numbers
of
United
whereas Chinese who arrived
Kingdom
illegally
1
CONFIDENTIAL
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