"
Her Stano
to 886
P Carter Esq SEAD
FCO
r na
Dear Peter,
RESTRICTED
BRITISH EMBASSY
HANOI
7 November 1989
copy
to Mr. Haswell, HKD
va
2) Miss Harper
Mr. Calvin
A useful report.
PRC 22/11
VBP: THE RETURN OF THE VOLUNTEERS
1.
We reported recently by telegram (Hanoi tęlno 591 to FCO of 7 Novmber) on what we had been doing to monitor the voluntary repatriation programme, and promised a fuller report by letter. Please see annexed detailed notes of my observations
of:
A.
B.
C.
2.
The Arrival at Noi Bai
The Transit Centre
Follow-Up Home Visits.
My impressions at this stage are that arrival procedures at the airport are virtually normal apart from some press attention (which is probably helpful if it gets reflected back to the people in the camps that conditions at the Transit Centre are perfectly acceptable, and certainly better than conditions shown in some TV reporting of camps in Hong Kong; that the Vietnamese have attempted to devise, and are applying in good faith, a humane process of reintegrating the voluntary repatriates into society; but they are over-anxious to secure a favourable impression on the part of outsiders monitoring their programme. UNHCR is alive to the need to assert their own power to choose freely whom to visit, if only to secure the credibility of their monitoring programme, but the Vietnamese distrust the impromptu.
3.
Can, Director of Immigration, the chief Vietnamese official concerned with the repatriation, pointed out two problems faced by the authorities which we probably need to bear in mind. He said that there was a certain public resentment of the repatriates provoked by the special attention they had received from the Vietnamese authorities and from foreign observers (the monitoring visits). He also remineded us of the problem posed by repatriated offenders. He said that among the repatriates who arrived on the fifth flight were two army deserters and one absconder from prison. He said that the Vietnamese government's policy was to remind people of the criminal law, but to forgive those who admitted their mistakes: what would we do? I said I /saw