TNAG-0587-FCO40-720-Aid-from-UK-for-Vietnamese-refugees-in-Hong-Kong-1976 — Page 256

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A K Goldsmith Esq

CONFIDENTIAL- г

C

5 AUG 1976

H4K1245/5/

South East Asia Department

Foreign & Commonwealth Office

London SW1

Year Flips,

VIETNAMESE REFUGEES

1.

1800

100A

BRITISH EMBASSY

RANGOON.

27 July 1976

DTM 5/8

ċċ

H.KIU)

pa.

5/vin

M..

Wärssin f

Enter

310

I was grateful for your kind telegram No.74. A word of explanation for my own No.116 seems called for.

2. As I hope was made plain in my telegrams and in my letter of 16 July, there was remarkably little rancour on the Burmese side over Hong Kong's decision not to allow the refugees to land there. But we ran risks for the regugees themselves in confronting the Burmese with their own "inescapable practical responsibilities" whic.. they had done their utmost to shuffle off onto anyone else who seemed a possible victim. ivicmories of the large numbers of unwanted KMP refugees who entered Burna over twentyfive years ago (many of whom still burden this country and had at one time lent themselves to embarrassing involvement with the CIA) have left deep impressions nere. Vietnamese refugees are in any cas regarded by the Burmese, rightly or wrongly, as a prer- lem of America's making; to harbour them, even tempor- arily, would complicate the good relations which the Burmese wish to build up with Hanoi. And from a purely practical. point of view, the Burmese Covernment are i no position to accommodate non-Burmese additions to their population least of all refugees from another socialist country. (Speaking personally, humanitarian interests should deter us from regarding Burma as a suitable asylum for these unfortunate people).

3. To compound the problem at this end, Ne Win's Government have been preoccupied since 2 July with the horrid possibility that there might be a great deal more to the Captain's Plot (my telegram No.115) than had first met their eye. Their reactions, when fright- ened, are apt to be brutal. The AVA's embarrassing difficulties were small beer by comparison and liable to be resolved in the same vein the more so as we

CONFIDENTIAL