T
THE RETURN OF THE BOAT PEOPLE
A REPORT BY THE RT HON LORD ENNALS AND THE RT HON TIMOTHY RAISON MP
Introduction
1. We visited Vietnam from 7-11 January 1990 at the request of the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the Rt Hon Douglas Hurd MP. As Mr Hurd explained in his statement on
12 December 1989 in the House of Commons, the purpose of our mission was to report on the conditions of the 51 non-volunteers who were repatriated from Hong Kong to Vietnam on 12 December. We went as independent observers and agreed with Mr Hurd before our departure that, in addition to the conclusions we reached on the conditions of the returnees, we should make any recommendations we believed were appropriate. We also agreed that we should talk to voluntary returnees as well as the 51 non-volunteers to assess whether there was any discrimination in the treatment of the two groups.
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2. The evidence and conclusions in this report are based, therefore, on detailed interviews with those returned on 12 December and with others who returned under the voluntary scheme; and discussions with the Vietnamese authorities in Hanoi and Haiphong, representatives of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and the British Ambassador to Vietnam. In each of the interviews with returnees, both non-voluntary and voluntary, we asked a standard set of questions of our own devising set out in the questionnaire at Annex A. We believe this was the most effective way of ensuring consistency and thoroughness during our discussions. Each of the interviews was carried out where the returnees were living through a British Embassy interpreter who performed his task professionally and competently. The interviews with the non-volunteers lasted between one and two hours, while those with volunteers averaged half an hour each. We were impressed by the frankness and openness with which the returnees spoke; and are satisfied that we built up a full and accurate picture of the reasons that led them to leave Vietnam, their experiences in Hong Kong, the circumstances of their return, the treatment they have received since their return and some of their current problems.
3. Most of those who returned to Vietnam on 12 December are fishermen who are resettling in Haiphong, a port about 65 miles east of Hanoi. We therefore travelled to Haiphong and spent two days in the area. Arranging a programme outside Hanoi was inevitably a complicated matter and there were some administrative hitches when we arrived in Haiphong. Neither did we have any guarantee that all or any of the 51 returnees would be available to see us. In fact five, who were not fishermen, were living in remote areas of Quang Ninh province and we reluctantly decided at an early stage that they were too far away for us to visit within the time available to us. With the cooperation of the local authorities, however, we carried out two interviews in Haiphong providing detailed information on 29 of those who returned on 12 December. We also traced another eight returnees to a village about 20 miles from Haiphong, where they were visiting a sick relative, thanks to information from the authorities
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