North.
Mr Canavan
나
20.
There was a report at the weekend that the Hong Kong Secretary
for Security had revealed a list of potential deportees, said to be around
200 people, and these names have been approved also by the Vietnamese
authorities. Is that a different 200 from the 218 you mentioned who had
gone home under a voluntary repatriation scheme earlier today or can you
confirm that there is a list of 200 people who are possibly going to be
subjected to enforced repatriation in the near future?
(Mr Maude) We have an agreement with the Vietnamese Government,
reached last year, a financial agreement which allows for non-voluntary
returns to Vietnam. It was on the basis of that agreement that we carried
out the repatriations on 12 December of last year. There are two reasons
for carrying out a mandatory repatriation. One is to send a signal to
Vietnam in the way I have described; the second is to maintain a regular
outflow of boat people from the camps in Hong Kong back to Vietnam for the
reasons I have said. The first reason does not apply now because the
message does seem to have been understood fairly widely, certainly in North
So far as the second reason is concerned, the entire capacity of
the Vietnamese to accept back people at the moment is fully filled by the
flow of voluntary repatriants and, as the sheet of paper I have given the
Committee indicates, there are still over 1,400, nearly 1,500 people, who
volunteered to return who have not yet returned and the CPA makes clear
and it is right that you should send back those who have volunteered to
return before resuming non-voluntary repatriation, although you have to
hold non-voluntary repatriation in reserve lest it be necessary to use it
in order to reinforce the message about the futility of making the journey
Vietnam.
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