SECURITY CLASSIFICATION
Top Secret
DSR 11C (Revised 5/87)
residents calling for the first asylum policy to be
abandoned. The letters (several thousand in all) are
heavily critical of Britain's role. And all this is
against a background of considerable resentment towards
Britain over the nationality issue.
Secret
Confidential
Restricted
Unclassified
PRIVACY MARKING
In Confidence
3. In the event, the Hong Kong Government were unable
to proceed with their plans to convert Lei Yue Mun
Barracks because of very strong local opposition to the
project: the location of any boat people camps is always
highly controversial in Hong Kong, and in this
particular case the barracks had already been earmarked
by the local authorities for conversion to a holiday
centre for local people. The Hong Kong Government also
calculated that the cost of converting Lei Yue Mun was
expensive in proportion to the number of places it would
make available.
4. Having received our offer of assistance, the Hong
Kong Government worked, on the basis that it would be
available for emergency temporary accommodation, to
identify cost-effective alternative projects (details
attached) to which they would like the funds to be
reallocated, in such a way as to generate the maximum
possible number of places. The revised plans would
provide substantially more accommodation (23,000
long-term places instead of 7,000 which the Lei Yue Mun
project would have yielded) for the same cost.
include expansion of the Whitehead Camp at a cost of
£2.5m to house an additional 9,000 people. The Hong Kong
They