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The Philippines Government have agreed in principle to establish a regional processing centre to which all refugees in the region could be transferred prior to resettlement within three years. We have announced our readiness to contribute 5 million pounds sterling towards the cost of such a centre which would provide early and urgently needed relief for Hong Kong.
The conference also marked international acceptance of the reality that all those boat people who do not qualify as
What could be refugees must find their future in Vietnam. more inhumane than the prospect of their indefinite detention in camps in Hong Kong and elsewhere? now is to work for arrangements to enable them to return to their country of origin safely and without fear of
punishment.
The task
Noble Lords will be pleased to hear that we shall be holding talks with the Vietnamese later this month-including during the visit to London next week by the Vietnamese Foreign Minister-with this aim in mind.
There has been criticism that the screening procedures in Hong Kong have been too slow and that there is a need to make them more flexible. The Hong Kong Governmemt have recently introduced a new screening and appeals procedure which will take only three months. It is intended to screen all the boat people currently in Hong Kong within 12 months.
Confidence in Hong Kong
I hope that I have been able to show that the interests of Hong Kong are of the deepest concern to the Government. The Foreign Secretary will be paying a visit to Hong Kong early next month. He will want to hear at first hand the views of the people of Hong Kong and to seek to reassure them of our continuing commitment and determination to work for their prosperous and stable future.
Confidence in Hong Kong has taken a battering in recent weeks. It is not the only rough passage that Hong Kong has been through, but it is a severe one and like no other in its particular complications.
Hong Kong has the strength to surmount it, but not without help, and not easily. Confidence cannot be rebuilt overnight. It cannot even be built on quite the same basis as before. It will depend crucially on how China acts both towards Hong Kong and towards her own people. As a matter of plain fact, confidence cannot be as strong as it should be unless and until China has an open, stable and civilised government which finds peaceful and constructive ways of meeting its people's concerns.