TNAG-0972-FCO40-1191-Vietnamese-refugees-in-Hong-Kong-1980 — Page 131

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VISIT BY HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES TO HONG KONG

Now back with UND

Mr Poul Hartling visited Hong Kong from 28 February to 2 March. This was his first visit since he became the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. On earlier visits to the region he had unfortunately not had time to come here. He called on the Governor (record attached for yourself Geneva and Hanoi only) and also had a meeting with the Secretary for Security, Bim Davies, myself and others involved in refugee matters. He is an old friend of the Governor's, from the latter's Copenhagen days, and stayed at Government House.

2.

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The visit went smoothly and happily. The High Commissioner went out of his way to praise Hong Kong for its humanitarian record in looking after refugees. There were no outstanding issues to be resolved. Difficulties we had with UNHCR over their responsibility for care and maintenance of refugees from Vietnam in Hong Kong were settled last year.

3.

The only point of substance concerning our relations raised by Hartling was the problem of refugees who have come to Hong Kong after being settled in China. Although he expressed the hope that those who had resettlement opportunities could be allowed to pursue them from Hong Kong, he did not question directly the repatriation to China of 2,800 such refugees in January. Indeed, he said that UNHCR did not wish refugees settled in China to be encouraged to come to Hong Kong. This was helpful. Furthermore, he raised the matter only during his meeting with officials, not when speaking to the Governor. This suggests that he felt obliged to follow up earlier representations but was not inclined to make an issue of it. We hope the remaining 2,200 cases of Vietnamese who were settled in China can be fairly quickly resolved. However, I think it is unlikely that the Chinese will respond much before the end of March. UNHCR have already examined all the case files and have been told that they can proceed now to conduct 40 selected interviews.

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For our part we emphasised the importance to Hong Kong of the refugee processing centre in the Philippines. Hartling said that he was anxious for stages II and III to be completed as quickly as possible, bringing the capacity up to 30,000. But he appeared less enthusiastic about completing the project to its full capacity of 50,000. We also spoke of our fears of a renewed outflow (on which Hartling was more optimistic than we are) and the importance of trying to reduce the likelihood and size by putting substance into the orderly departure scheme.

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