TNAG-1069-FCO40-1319-Resettlement-of-Vietnamese-refugees-from-Hong-Kong-in-the-UK-1981 — Page 39

14

CONFIDENTIAL

British High Commission

Tanglin Circus

Singapore 10

K FX Burns

SEAD

FCO SW1

Ба

fr 243110

RECEIVED IN REGISTRY NO. 14 2 5 SEP 1981

M. Newton M. Sutt

Yes I think so, Ow underly

P.N

vessage

22.9

not

Eti

understood. I had better write again?

Your reference

Our reference 243/2

Date

из

14/9

11 September 1981

DESK

INDEX

239

Dear Kevin

VIETNAMESE REFUGEES

We were grateful to receive a copy of your letter of 11 August to John Ramsden in which you set out a considered reply to Derek Tonkin's teleletter of 25 June on this subject. It is very useful for us to know the terms in which you analyse the problem and to have a clear statement of where we stand. But I think it would be fair to say that we also found it a discouraging, not to say demoralising, response.

/our

2. I think this reaction stems in part from the sense of helplessness generated by the conclusions you reach in paragraphs seven and eight. But I recognise that this is probably an honest and realistic appreciation of/ability to help with the refugee problem. More depressing I found was the readiness to concede that we are impotent when it comes to dealing with the underlying issue of principle ie the unaccept- ability of one country attempting to solve its problems at the expense of its neighbours in particular and the international community in general.

3

I thought that the great merit of Derek Tonkin's analysis lay in its readiness to face up to this problem. It may be difficult to know how to stop the exodus and, in moral terms, to justify the kind of measures which might be involved in doing so. But surely to dismiss the problem as "too difficult" and concentrate our energies on ameliorating the symptoms (which seems to be the general Western approach) is to take the soft option and one which we may later regret.

4.

Perhaps I have been in Singapore too long, but increasingly it seems to us that their view that we are altogether too soft with the Vietnamese on the refugee issue may well be right. One possible preliminary line of action, which would be consistent with our own inability to consider a further quota and with Derek Tonkins suggestion in para 14 of his teleletter, would be to positively encourage the countries of first asylum and resettlement to coordinate a policy of reduced resettlement. Neither side can operate without the agreement of the other without causing either appalling humanitarian problems for the refugees or intolerable 'immigration

immigration' problems for the 1st