TNAG-0497-FCO40-562-Deportation-of-foreign-nationals-from-Hong-Kong-1974 — Page 44

+

Tom Cox, M.P.,

House of Commons,

Westminster, S.W.1.

Dear Tom Cox,

$500

London, SW18 3QS.

17th July 1974.

B

1. p... Pag

FAU 3/548/2

I am writing on behalf of Wandsworth District Woodcraft Folk,

a socialist educational children's organisation, to appeal for your help

for the children in Vietnam. During the period of the war in Vietnam, the

Woodcraft Folk gave much active support to the children of that unhappy

country, through donations to the Committee for Medical Aid. Even when the war ended, many of our members continued to send help and responded to appeals

for the rebuilding of schools and hospitals in North Vietnam.

We hoped, as did millions of peace-loving people round the world, that the signing of the Paris Agreement on Vietnam in 1973 would mean an end of warfare and the beginning of a normal existence for the children of that country, both North and South. The American Expeditionary

Forces withdrew, and negotiations for the exchange of captured military and civilian personnel began.

•

Thus we are shocked to learn that 200,000 men, women and

children still languish in the prisons and concentration camps of Saigon.

The Paris Agreement recognised the existence of two armies and two zones

of administration in South Vietnam one controlled by President Thieu and

the other by the Liberation movement. Yet, backed by American economic and military aid (1,450 million dollars this year as against 800 million in 1973), President Thieu's armed forces continue their raids on liberated areas, arresting, torturing and imposing long political sentences on whole families on fathers, mothers, children and babies. Crippled, diseased and terrorised in camps and overcrowded prison cells, many children are kept as hostages for missing parents, or held after their parents have been released

because their fathers cannot afford to "buy" them out.

In the Woodcraft Folk, our humanitarian outlook towards the

child victims of war does not end with the signing of peace agreements. Some prisons are so full of children that the jailers have had to organise special

sections for them where they are forced to do hard labour. Nowhere is there runy rublomph at education and the only training a boy or glað, gola in in stealing and drug addiction such is the corrupting effect of crowded

prisons.