TNAG-0896-FCO40-1106-Refugees-from-Vietnam-in-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-boat-people-1979 — Page 228

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C.

Impact of sea rescue and other refugee relief efforts:

In conclusion, I would like to address the issue of the impact of the range of activities that the international community through the UNHCR is carrying out in Southeast Asia on the decision of individual Indochinese as to whether to flee or not.

In the first instance, we should remind ourselves, that the long-standing primary reason for their decision to leave - in all

cases at great risk to their personal safety is the denial of human rights in their homeland and the recognition on their part that there is no future for them there. This decision has been reinforced and speeded up by a policy of encouraging the departure of certain elements .... the Vietnamese authorities no longer consider desirable, especially the ethnic Chinese,

Nothing that the international community and the first asylum countries either have done or have failed to do can be

said to have had any appreciable effect on this fundamental

motivation, whether:

So what

in the grim human circumstances of Pulau Bidong;

on the unsheltered beaches of the Anambas Islands and the

east coast of Malaysia;

in the pirate-infested waters of the Gulf of Thailand;

in unseaworthy boats pulled back out to sea off Malaysia;

in the meager sea rescue efforts to date of the world's shipping fleets (only about 2 percent of the boat refugees have been rescued by merchant vessels );