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VIETNAMESE MIGRANTS: BULL POINTS
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Majority of Vietnamese migrants who returned to Vietnam in
1992 went voluntarily under United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees auspices. Since voluntary repatriation from
Hong Kong began in March 1989, almost 30,000 have returned in
this way.
UK/Hong Kong Orderly Repatriation Programme (ORP) now running for over a year. 627 illegal immigrants returned to Vietnam under ORP arrangements since November 1991.
Outflow from Vietnam now capped. Only 12 new arrivals in Hong Kong in 1992 compared with 20,000 in 1991. (22 so far in 1993. Message at last getting through that migrants will have to return if they are screened out.
Vietnamese have given undertakings that no-one
returning to Vietnam under either the UNHCR's voluntary programme or the ORP will face persecution. They allow full access to returnees by the UNHCR, the British Embassy and various NGOs for monitoring purposes.
There has not been a single substantiated instance of persecution in more than 42,000 cases (including returns from other countries in the region).
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Screening and appeal procedures in Hong Kong are monitored
by the UNHCR who may, under their mandate, declare anybody to be a refugee at any stage of the process. Nobody declared a refugee by the UNHCR will be repatriated.
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Before this latest influx from China, we had estimated that
if the rate of voluntary returns had been maintained and the remaining refugees quickly resettled, the Hong Kong camps could have been empty within three years.
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