VIETNAMESE REFUGEES: SELECTION VISIT TO HONG KONG, AUGUST 1979
1. Accompanied by Mrs Morley-Fletcher of BCAR I spent 3 weeks in Hong Kong from 13 August selecting Vietnamese refugees for resettlement in the United Kingdom. This note is a preliminary
report on the exercise; a more detailed analysis of those selected
will be produced later.
2. In the course of our visit we interviewed refugees at six of the
Colony's largest refugee camps. We saw cases representing about 2,400 people of which just under 1,800 were selected for UK
resettlement. The following paragraphs give a broad picture of the current refugee situation in Hong Kong as we found it, together
with some of the difficulties encountered.
The present situation
3. Following the Vietnamese government's undertaking at the Geneva
Conference to impose a moratorium on the mass exodus of boat
refugees, the flow of daily arrivals into Hong Kong has been
dramatically reduced from its peak of about 1,000 a day in June.
It has not, however, stopped altogether; about 3,000 refugees arrived during the month of August. The rate of departures to
resettlement countries has not been as encouraging as the
Hong Kong Government had hoped it would be following the Geneva
conference. The result is that the total number of refugees in
the Colony is still creeping slowly upwards. At the end of
August there were about 67,000 still awaiting resettlement.
4. The refugees are housed in 16 refugee camps in the Colony;
several of these hold very small numbers, but the two largest are at present housing about 16,000 people each. That so many people have been accommodated in a territory notoriously short of space and with severe social problems of its own, says much for the
resourcefullness and humanitarian policies of the Hong Kong Government. However, living conditions in the camps are appalling
In the two largest camps we visited almost all the small children.
were suffering from boils, sores and other skin ailments resulting
from severely overcrowded conditions. In one "camp", 16,000.
people were housed in a 23 storey factory building, hurriedly
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