DRAFT "DEAR COLLEAGUE" LETTER FROM MR GOODLAD
To: All MPs
Selected Peers
VIETNAMESE MIGRANTS IN HONG KONG
In his letter of 29 October 1991 (copy attached), Malcolm Caithness described the measures we had agreed with the Vietnamese for the repatriation of non-refugees from Hong Kong.
Since then 123 migrants have been returned to Vietnam on three mandatory flights. During the same period 7,500 have returned under UNHCR's voluntary programme. The outflow from Vietnam appears to have been capped there have been only seven new arrivals so far this year, compared to 3, 500 in the same period of 1992.
We now need to make a start with returning
non-refugees who were already in Hong Kong on 29 October 1991. We have accordingly reached agreement with the Vietnamese on the practical arrangements for this, and I hope the first flight in this second phase of the Orderly Repatriation Programme (ORP) can take place very soon.
There are still some 56,000 Vietnamese migrants in Hong Kong and it is expected that the majority will not qualify as refugees. Those who do not will, once any appeals have been heard, be offered the chance of repatriation under the UNHCR voluntary programme. hope that most non-refugees will choose this option but inevitably some will not. These will be returned under
the ORP.
We
Malcolm Caithness made clear in his letter that we will not return refugees to Vietnam and that the Vietnamese have given a firm undertaking that no returning migrant will be persecuted. They allow full to UNHCR and others for monitoring purposes and of the more than 20,000 non-refugees who have now returned from the region, there has not been a single substantiated case of persecution.
Despite this crushing burden, Hong Kong has remained a country of first asylum. They will continue to screen new arrivals and arrange through UNHCR for those found to
SOSACP
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