TNAG-0891-FCO40-1101-Refugees-from-Vietnam-in-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-boat-people-1979 — Page 130

CONFIDENTIAL

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Mr Simons SEAD

VIETNAMESE REFUGEES

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I sat next to the Malaysian Chargé (Mr Kamaralzaman) and the Indonesian Ambassador (Mr Hartantyo) at Sir James Murray's lunch for the Minister of State and Mr Hartling on 18 June. I explained that during Mr Blaker's discussions with the UNHCR the latter had made the point that whatever the West might be able to do in terms of a greater effort to resettle Vietnamese refugees outside the region it seemed almost inevitable that some (perhaps one in three) of the refugees would eventually have to find permanent homes in the countries of South-East Asia. I asked the Malaysian and Indonesian how they thought their governments would react to this prospect.

2. Mr Kamarulzaman said that there could be absolutely no question of any refugees from Vietnam being resettled permanently in Malaysia. The world would have to accept that the racial balance in Malaysia was so delicate that even quite insignificant numbers of new Chinese settlers could spark off racial trouble. The refugees were arriving on the Malay eastern states of the peninsula. The local people there feared and distrusted Malaysia's existing Chinese population: they just couldn't put up with boat loads of extra Chinese washing up on their shores. Mr Kamaralzaman said that the Malaysian Government also had to take account of the security situation in the peninsula. The existing small numbers of terrorists in the jungle and their supporters in the urban areas were contained only by a considerable effort by the Malaysian security forces. The Malaysian Government had concrete evidence that the boat loads of refugees contained a levening of active communist infiltrators who could be expected to support the efforts of the communists already in Malaysia. was an additional good reason why the Malaysians could not accept that any residue should be left in their country.

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3. Mr Kamarulzaman then claimed that Malaysia had already done its bit by accepting nearly 2000 refugees from Cambodia after that country fell to the communists in 1975 and had a considerable refugee problem in Sabah where over 60,000 Filipinos had taken refuge to escape the fighting in the southern Philippines. I countered this by remarking that the Cambodians were Muslims whom the Malaysian Government had specifically fetched from Cambodia at the time of the communist take-over with a view to integrating them as Bumiputras in Malaysia, thus upsetting the racial balance. As for the Filipinos I said it was really quite well known that their arrival in Sabah had been engineered by Tun Mustapha who had been engaged in private enterprise support of the Muslim separatists in the Philippines. Tun Mustapha had wanted to boost

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CONFIDENTIAL