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The least the outside world could do was to assist with those costs. Tan Sri Ghazali said the High Commissioner would let the FCO have details of these but added that money was not the real problem. Even his own political party were making problems for the government about the presence of so many refugees on Malaysian soil. There had to be pledges from other countries to resettle all of them in due
course.
3. Turning to the debate in the House, Mr Murray thought some MPs might sugrest that the refugees themselves should be more appropriately resettled in South East Asia rather than in Western countries. Mr Luard agreed they might but noted that the French Minister had told him in Geneva that the Indo-Chinese refugees were first-class immigrants. They had very quickly found jobs and had become productive members of society. Mr Murray said the Canadians were of this opinion, too. Tan Sri Ghazali replied that despite the close cultural links in the region, it was not always easy to get people from neighbouring countries to live peaceably together. Mr Luard wondered whether Latin American countries could do more resettlement of Indo-Chinese refugees. Tan Sri Ghazali agreed, saying some atin American countries had had experience in these matters: Japanese communities had, for example, been absorbed successfully into Latin American society.
4.
•
Tan Sri Ghazali said that he would like to see the British Government talk not only about the plight of refugees but also about the plight of the Malaysians in having to cope with them. Outside Malaysia, there was insufficient understanding of Malaysia's difficulties in this respect. Mr Luard said he thought the British people were now beginning to understand the problem more. A long article in that day's Financial Times, though inaccurate on some points, pointed to this. As for the refugees who arrived off the coast of Malaysia on the SS Hai Hong, Tan Sri Ghazali said it was his Government's deliberate policy to refuse them entry The refugees' arrival had been the result of unscrupulous organised racketeering. The leader of the racketeers had been arrested in Kuala Lumpur. The racketeers, if they wanted to indulge in such a game, could themselves find homes for the refugees and not expect to dump them on a country already overcrowded with refugees. Mr Murray asked whether the strength of public feeling within Malaysia, highlighted by the Hai Hong affair, might seriously affect Malaysian/Vietnamese relations. Tan Sri Ghazali said all the ingredients were already there: it would be very easy indeed to whip up feelings against the Vietnamese authorities.
5. Referring to the sharp Chinese reaction to the harsh Vietnamese actions towards the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam, Tan Sri Ghazali said he had recently asked Teng Hsiao Ping whether China would wave a big stick at Malaysia in defence of the ethnic
Chinese population there. But he had received no reply: Teng, he said, had changed the subject at that point.
6. Mr Luard asked whether Malaysia was willing to continue to accept refugees, apart from cases like the Hai Hong, on an interim basis. Tan Sri Ghazali said it would, provided there was a processing centre elsewhere and provided Malaysia had pledges from third countries to resettle the refugees in due course. Mr Luard said it was difficult to see how Western Governments could collectively agree in advance to accept every single refugee without knowing how many there would be. They made offers of specific numbers. Offers from third countries had been generally disappointing and the total did not match the
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