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Telephone 01-
Mrs Ruth Osborn
Chairman
Women's International League for
Peace and Freedom
29 Great James Street
London WC1N ZES
Your reference
Our reference
HKK 14/5
Date
27 September 1974
33
суеш По Оstom,
The Secretary of State has asked me to thank you for your letter of 20 September about the group of 118 South Vietnamese who were repatriated from Hong Kong on 17 June.
As you may know, the group were illegal immigrants who were caught as they tried to enter Hong Kong. They had been brought from Vietnam by a well-organised commercial smuggling organisation. Nevertheless, before the Government of Hong Kong ordered their return, they sought and obtained from the South Vietnamese Government, assurances that nothing serious would happen to members of the group who were victims of the syndicate which had smuggled them out of Vietnam, and that cases of violation of Vietnam's immigration/ emigration laws would be tried in open court and would not be harshly punished.
Following further representations by our Ambassador in Saigon, the Vietnamese Government issued on 30 July the following statement:-
"The British Ambassador called to express his Government's concern about the apparently conflicting press reports of the assurances given to the British and Hong Kong Governments about the 118 illegal immigrants repatriated from Hong Kong.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Vietnam reaffirmed to the British Ambassador in the Republic of Vietnam what he had already informed the Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London, Mr Hattersley: namely that the 118 illegal emigrants who had been repatriated from Hong Kong are being treated fairly and will be tried in open court in the normal way according to the laws of this country. It is not expected that these illegal emigrants would receive any exceptional punishment."
A few days later the Vietnamese Minister for Information, in reply to a telegram from Amnesty International, said that "no case of death or injury has been reported among those detained prior to appearing in court".
There is in fact no evidence that the group have been maltreated. After they had been repatriated, it was found that one member, who had given a false name in Hong Kong, had previously been
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