CONFIDENTIAL
d
LORD RIPPON'S VISIT TO HONG KONG
VIETNAMESE BOAT PEOPLE
Current Position
1. There are still over 54,000 Vietnamese boat people in Hong Kong.
But arrivals in Hong Kong so far this year are well down on last
year's figures (938 in the period up to 20 April, compared to 4230
in the corresponding period last year). There seems to be a chance
that we will therefore escape an influx on the 1989 scale. But even
if this year's inflow is of manageable proportions (and it is too
soon to be sure), we still face a major problem over those screened
out as non-refugees. There are already over 7,500 in Hong Kong who
have been definitively screened out. By July, this number might
rise to 10,000. Only a tiny proportion of these (190 at the last
count) are volunteering to return.
2. We are trying to speed up the return of volunteers and hope to have dealt with the backlog (currently 1760) by July. But
thereafter if the number of volunteers coming forward fails to match
the total of 1000 a month agreed with the Vietnamese during
Mr Maude's visit to Hanoi in February, we will want to make up the
shortfall by repatriating non-volunteers.
3. The Geneva International Conference Steering Committee has so
far failed to agree on what should be done with those who are not refugees but who do not volunteer to return. At the third meeting
of the Steering Committee in January, a concensus that mandatory
repatriation could begin on 1 July 1990 was blocked by the United
States, which insisted on waiting until 1 January 1991 and by
Vietnam, which proposed 1 October 1990. We have made clear to the United States that if they continue to oppose involuntary repatriation, Hong Kong and other places of first asylum in the
region would look to the United States to provide an alternative
solution, perhaps by making available a site somewhere in the
Pacific (eg Guam) for a holding centre where the screened out could stay until conditions in Vietnam improved to the point where the Americans thought it right for them to be repatriated.
MELADF
CONFIDENTIAL