TNAG-0889-FCO40-1099-Refugees-from-Vietnam-in-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-boat-people-1979 — Page 62

CONFIDENTI AL

Mr Flower SEAD

00: Mr Morgan UN Dept

HKK 243/1.

WED IN REGISTRY NO. $!

1 4 JUN1979

DERK OFFICER

1009

VIETNAMESE REFUGEES:

IND

PA

Taken

Q No

джь

1. We spoke about the written PQ to which you are preparing a reply. As I took it down, the text is as follows :

"To ask the Lord Privy Seal if he will publish in the Official Report, from international sources available to him, a list of the countries which have accepted Vietnamese refugees, and the numbers accepted to the latest available date."

2. You mentioned that you were intending to base your reply on a table which UN Department had received from the UN HCR and which showed, amongst other things that, on 1 žmy, Hong Kong had accepted 8,000 refugees for permanent residence and that a further 20,200 were temporarily in Hong Kong awaiting resettlement elsewhere. I pointed out that we could not publish a table that included Hong Kong amongst a list of "countries" (the Chinese, who keep a very sharp eye upen for such things, would be bound to protest). It would also not be understood in Hong Kong if we published figures that appeared to understate the Hong Kong problem. We agreed therefore to omit Hong Kong from the UN HCR table and and instead to add a footnote, which I suggest should be on the following lines:

3.

"Hong Kong has also admitted 9,200 former residents of Vietnam for permanent

settlement since 1975. On 5 June, there were a further 44,690 Vietnam refugees in the territory who had been allowed to enter Hong Kong temporarily pending resettlement elsewhere."

These figures have been obtained by telephone from the Director of Immigration in Hong Kong sincs we spoke this morning: the somewhat higher figures for those accepted for permanent settlement than have sometimes been quoted refer to former residents of Indo-China as a whole.

4. I am not sure what you intend to say in your background note. But you may wish to be aware that the Government's policy towards Vietnamese refugees is as follows:

CONFIDENTIAL

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