UNHCR Debt
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The community and Honourable Members are rightly concerned to see the early repayment of the one billion dollars which the UNHCR owes the Hong Kong Government. We have a contractual debt which the UNHCR have repeatedly assured us that they will discharge. They continue to repay annual sums which represent an increasing proportion of the amount spent, in light of the reduction of the VM population in our camps. Their ability to repay fully the obligated amount is, of course, dependant on the level of donations from the international community. In that connection, the attention of donor countries has been drawn to the debt at both the Fifth and the Sixth CPA Steering Committee meetings. Members may rest assured that we shall continue to remind the UNHCR and the international community of their obligations and urge them to honour these obligations as soon as possible. In our efforts, we shall be assisted, as we have been in the past, by the Government of the United Kingdom, which have also contributed over one billion dollars towards the VM programme in HK and accepted more than 15,000 Vietnamese refugees from Hong Kong. The UK is also the third among countries which have taken the highest number of Vietnamese refugees from Hong Kong.
First Asylum
Let me now turn to the policy of first asylum. But I would like to respond to the Hon Chim Pui-chung's earlier remarks. When Vietnamese migrants enter Hong Kong waters, we will ask them whether they have the intention of coming to Hong Kong. If they do not want to stay in Hong Kong and would like to go to a third country, our Marine Police will provide them with some reprovisioning and then allow their boats to leave our waters. We would not blindly accept all Vietnamese migrants entering Hong Kong waters. Since the outset of the human exodus from Vietnam in 1975, Hong Kong has been a port of first asylum. This was the price we paid for international cooperation in resolving this problem. Abolition of the policy would absolutely not help in any way to accelerate the repatriation of the 21,000 migrants in our camps. On the contrary, such a move would degrade our humanitarian standing in the international community, and jeopardise our efforts to seek international cooperation to draw this whole chapter to a close.