THE BOAT REFUGEES FROM VIETNAM
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another freighter, the Skyluck, from entering Hong Kong waters without authorisation on February 7 with 2,651 refugees. This ship was escorted to an anchorage off Lamma Island and, since conditions on board were considerably better than the crowded state in which the Huey Fong had arrived, her inmates were kept on the vessel, where they were to stay for nearly five months, receiving daily provisions and medical care whenever needed.
There was another even more compelling reason for leaving these refugees on the ship. By March the reception areas on land were crammed to bursting point with the flood of refugees who had arrived, and continued to arrive, in boats.
The Small Boats
In January, 1979, more than 2,000 Vietnamese refugees reached Hong Kong in small boats, to join an existing refugee population of 5,391. Arrivals in January, including those aboard the Huey Fong, totalled 5,395 but departures for resettlement in the same period amounted to only 314. These respective totals set an ominous pattern which was to grow more pro- nounced as the influx swelled inexorably over the next five months. On one black day in mid-May, by which time there were 30,000 refugees in Hong Kong, more than 1,700 people landed, whereas only one left for resettlement.
They came in on small decrepit craft, rickety junks with rotten timbers and tattered sails - anything that could be driven by motor or wind, loaded to the gunwales with desperate fugitives of all ages. Watching these frail hulks being towed into the harbour, an observer could well believe estimates that for every refugee who sailed from Vietnam and arrived safely on the shores of a neighbouring territory, another refugee lost his life at sea. Nor could one forget that the summer typhoon season was beginning.
These boats, arriving daily in Hong Kong, moored not at some discreetly distant beach but in the heart of the city. After being checked at a quarantine anchorage, they moved through the harbour to the Government Dockyard at Canton Road, where they tied up beside one of the most crowded districts of Kowloon, observed by thousands of apprehen- sive residents. Similarly, most of the camps to which the refugees moved from the dockyard were not located in remote parts of Hong Kong but in the urban areas. Several of these camps were overlooked by the multi-storey blocks of housing estates built to accommodate an earlier generation of people who had migrated to Hong Kong. Fellow-feelings for refugees, natural to Hong Kong people, became increasingly tinged with concern.
From the beginning of March to the end of June, hardly a day passed that did not bring its quota of alarming news. To give but, two examples:
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On March 30, 849 refugees landed from seven boats, all of them unseaworthy and on the point of sinking.
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On April 15, a 35-metre-long vessel, the Ha Long, forced its way into the harbour with no less than 573 refugees crammed like sardines into its dark stinking hold. Although this boat was suspected of being operated by a 'human cargo syndicate', there was no question of keeping its inmates on board during investigations; all were quickly taken ashore.
In the same period there were equally alarming developments in the pattern of immigra- tion, legal and illegal, from China. In May, the number of people caught along the land border or at sea trying to enter Hong Kong illegally reached a daily average of 465. It was reckoned that for every person detained about three made their way undetected to the urban areas.
When the Governor began a two-week goodwill visit to the People's Republic of China in late March, the problem of uncontrolled immigration was one he repeatedly raised with his hosts. The Chinese were sympathetic to Hong Kong's dilemma, and promised action to curb the exodus as soon as possible, but they explained that they had their own difficulties,