Conclusions and Recommendations
40.
We have 12 conclusions and recommendations:
a) Our careful investigations of non-volunteers indicate no reason to believe that they were wrongly classified as non-refugees after screening in Hong Kong. In every case, their motives in going to Hong Kong were purely economic rather than political. We believe strongly that it is essential not to undermine the world-wide system for protecting genuine refugees by conferring that status on people who do not have a well-founded fear of persecution if they return home.
b) We have found no evidence of political persecution in Vietnam or official harassment of non-volunteers or voluntary returnees. On the other hand we recognise that our investigations were inevitably limited and believe that a long-term system of monitoring is vital for all returnees.
c) The appropriate authority to provide monitoring is the UNHCR and we hope that ways can be found by which they will take on the task for all returnees.
d) The Comprehensive Plan of Action agreed at the International Conference on Indo-Chinese Refugees in Geneva in June 1989 stated that the right place for persons not classified as refugees was their country of origin. It will inevitably take time to fulfil this aim in respect of the boat people. But the objective should be to intensify effective counselling about the return to Vietnam and to ensure a proper procedure for their return. Boat people who are not refugees need to realise that there is no prospect of their moving on to other countries, where priority must be given to the resettlement of refugees. Those in the camps need to have a clear and realistic picture of what return to Vietnam involves: that they will not be persec ited or punished; that they will receive certain limited fi ancial assistance; and that their resettlement in V: tnam will be properly monitored. This requires a really effective information campaign in Hong Kong.
e) We are convinced that all those concerned Vietnamese and Hong Kong Governments and the UNHCR must cooperate much more effectively in an information campaign to ensure that in Vietnam there is a clear understanding that the journey to Hong Kong is futile for all but those with a genuine claim to refugee status. There have been changes for the better recently in Vietnam and we know that the UNHCR has produced some video material in Vietnam; and that two Vietnamese film teams are now in Hong Kong filming in the camps. We would like to see a very active campaign of film and video as well as other public information material for showing in both Hong Kong and Vietnam.
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the British,
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