HONG KONG BACKGROUND BRIEF
VIETNAMESE BOAT PEOPLE
1. Since 1975, nearly 170,000 Vietnamese boat people have arrived
in Hong Kong, 34,000 of them during 1989. None has been turned
away. Over 120,000 have been resettled, 13,000 to the UK. There are
now over 54,000 boat people in Hong Kong.
2. The first Geneva Conference in 1979 agreed that all boat people
leaving Vietnam would automatically be accorded refugee status. The need to review the outcome of that Conference became apparent in the
early 1980s, when the majority of those leaving Vietnam had already become economic migrants mostly farmers and fishermen from the
North rather than people fleeing persecution. The situation
became serious in the mid-1980s, when new arrivals began to exceed
the rate of resettlement. Major influxes in 1987 and 1988 precipitated the introduction of screening in Hong Kong and led to
calls for a comprehensive and durable solution. The second Geneva
Conference in June 1989 agreed a Comprehensive Plan of Action, which
ended the era of automatic resettlement and extended screening to South East Asia generally.
3. The Comprehensive Plan of Action resettlement provisions included sufficient pledges to clear the camps over three years of all those who arrived in places of first asylum before screening (ie
pre-cut-off date caseload). As part of this process UK agreed to
accept a further 2000 refugees from Hong Kong. The provisions for
repatriation were less clear-cut, and less satisfactory. It was agreed in principle that all non-refugees should return to their
country of origin although in the first instance every effort should
be made to encourage voluntary return. If, after the passage of reasonable time, the voluntary programme was not making sufficient progress, alternatives would be examined.
4.
Bilateral negotiations with the Vietnamese on the question of repatriation began in the margins of the Geneva Conference.
MC1AJH