TNAG-0654-FCO40-803-Refugees-from-Vietnam-in-Hong-Kong-1977 — Page 11

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Mr Thompson - would you please ensure we we hept - the picture over whether or not His accept

Foreign and Commonwealth Office sponsibilis for Hong Kong

London SW1A 2AH

PL Taylor Esq Home Office

Lunar House

40 Wellesley Road

CROYDON

1.

Dear Taylor,

Telephone 01-

!!KK 243/332/1

25% 777

No 7551, &

registoed vessels. If the answer is'no, we may have to take this up with Hong Kong, at least to enre that they, we aware of our

attitude

Your reference

Our reference UNS 243/508/1

Date 16 November 1977

Wa!!!!

N/R.

Thank you for sending us a copy of your proposed draft submission to the Home Secretary on Indo-Chinese "small boat" refugees. I apologise for the delay in commenting. I attach some suggested amendments to your draft and we have some additional points of substance which you may wish to consider for inclusion.

2. We are grateful to you for considering the acceptance into the UK of a few more "boat people". If this can be done in such a way as to relieve British-registered vessels of some of their burden, while at the same time avoiding a new quota, as such, then so much the better.

Since your draft was prepared, we have been involved in the "Sinkiang" affair the Hong Kong registered vessel which recently put into Singapore with 28 refugees aboard. At the time, the Department of Trade confirmed to us that, under the Merchant Shipping Act 1894, vessels registered in Hong Kong and other ports of our overseas territories are considered to be British- registered vessels. However, there now seems to be some doubt about this: no doubt Marine Division of the Department of Trade will provide chapter and verse. Depending on their further advice, you may wish to consider to what extent we should be prepared to give guarantees to third countries on behalf of our overseas territories. Clearly, we should not wish to provide guarantees to any countries without first exploring the possibility of having the refugees landed on the basis of the undertaking usually provided by UNHCR. If the UNHCR undertaking is unacceptable to a third country we should, as we have done in the past, wish to consider bilateral action which may be appropriate, such as representations: these have been successful on a number of occasions. In other words, any guarantee should be given only as a last resort. Where we provide an undertaking on behalf of one of our overseas territories, if you decide to recommend this, we would try to ensure that the territory itself should accept the refugees if this were possible, in this way extending the time available to UNHCR for finding places of permanent settlement for the refugees and thereby reducing still further the chances of any refugees, picked up by ships registered in ports of our overseas territories, eventually coming to the UK.

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