TNAG-0898-FCO40-1108-Refugees-from-Vietnam-in-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-boat-people-1979 — Page 249

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HONG KONG COMMUNITY COMMITTEE HKK 243

FOR THE RESETTLEMENT OF VIETNAMESE REFUGEES

P.O. BOX 9756

HONG KONG

по

28.10

1741A)

The Editor,

The Observer,

8, St. Andrew's Hill,

London E.C.4.

3rd Cctober, 1979

Dear Sir,

attached

in lill after

17384

Your report, "Hong Kong 'neglect' kills refugee babies" (Sertember 30th), has brought home to us and the people of Hong Kong the dangerous fact of how easy it is to present a situation in an upside-down fashion thus maligning a whole community.

We consider it a fortunate coincidence that we were in London when this distasteful story appeared. As delegates of the newly-established Hong Kong Community Committee for the Resettlement of Vietnamese Refugees, we are on a journey around the world to draw the attention of the major countries of resettlement to the plight of the 65,000 boat refugees who have found a haven of hope in Hong Kong. We have never turned a single‘Vietnamese boat refugee away and, as a result, we now provide care and maintenance for 40 per cent of all such refugees in South East Asia.

Since the beginning of this year, however, only 12,000 refugees have been resettled. We have visited many countries during the past few weeks and talked to government officials and voluntary agencies, and time again we have been told that this slow rate of resettle- ment may well be the result of the generous and helpful treatment accorded to the Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong.

The policy/...

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