TNAG-0887-FCO40-1097-Refugees-from-Vietnam-in-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-boat-people-1979 — Page 65

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1. There are one or two further points which I should like to add to those made in my earlier minute today.

2.

(282)

It was suggested that there might be merit in convening a meeting of the Security Council to consider the problem created by the refugees. The Secretary of State seemed to be persuaded that on balance this was not a good idea. I should just like to add that from a legal point of view it might be difficult to bring the matter within the Security Council's terms of reference, which are primarily concerned with the responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.

3. It was also suggested that the Economic and Social Council was the more appropriate organ of the UN for consider- ing this matter. Although the next meeting of the Council is not scheduled to take place until July, I note that Article 72.2 of the Charter provides that the Council "shall meet as required in accordance with its rules, which shall include provision for the convening of meetings on the request of a majority of its members". It would seem, therefore, open to us to try to gather a majority of the members of the Council to request a special meeting.

4. If it were thought better to take action through some kind of ad hoc meeting of States, one possibility which might be considered would be the convening of a meeting of parties to the Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. This would, however, involve an implicit acknow- ledgment that the refugees in question met the definition of "refugee" in the Convention and Protocol.

5. While mentioning the Refugees Convention I should just add mention of Article 33.1 of the Convention which provides that no contracting State "shall expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion". It is thus possible (for the moment I go no further) that we might be legally obliged not to return the refugees to Vietnam assuming, of course, that they are indeed "refugees" as defined in the folutiones, but Convention and Protocol.

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AT NOT

6. There is one further legal factor which I should mention. Although most of the refugees are, I understand, ethnically Chinese, it seems probable that many of them, perhaps all, are in legal terms nationals of Vietnam. Furthermore, although there is an argument that the refugees are leaving Vietnam voluntarily, there could well be sufficient evidence to show that the circumstances, taken as a whole, amount to their expulsion by the Vietnamese Government.

If that is so,

we are faced with what amounts to an expulsion by a State of

/its own

CONET DENILTAL