CONFIDENTIAL
4
Squth East Asia to adopt a humanitarian attitude towards
Vietnamese refugees who end up in their waters or on their
shores. One might have imagined therefore, in such a situation,
that the one territory which has rigidly adhered to a policy
of humanitarianism would be encouraged not to depart from it
لم
by ensuring that the resettlement programme for the region
reflected a fair' share of places for Hong Kong. But what is
the reality? The reality is that although Hong Kong has received.
35 per cent of all boat refugees arriving in the region during
the first six months of this year its humanitarian policies have
been rewarded by providing it with only 13 per cent of resettlement
places for the region. There may well be good political and
economic reasons why the countries of final resettlement are
places.
? discriminating against Hong Kong in the provision of resettlement
But the perception must certainly be, and particularly
so in Hong Kong, that inhumanity is being rewarded and Hong Kong,
which perhaps alone has followed the principles which the UNHCR
has laid down, is being discriminated against for so doing.
Are we not in danger of moving towards a situation, unpalatable
as it may be to imagine, that countries are competing against
each other on the basis of which can be most inhumane in order
to focus attention upon themselves and in the wake of that
attention engender public concern which is in due course trans-
lated into pledges of even more resettlement places.
believe that any civilised country would wish this to happen
by design or by accident but the tragedy is that the present
allocation of resettlement places from the region could well
lead to a situation which could drift into such a tragedy as
the one I have described.
I cannot
I make no special pleas/..
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