CONFIDENTIAL
give at least the impression of probity (eg Ne Win, President Suharto, Mrs Gandhi, President Chun, President Zia). In public, they avoid as the plague an ostentatious life style. Their houses, at least from the outside, blend in with the comfortable villas which adjoin them. President Zia refuses to live in the new Presidential Palace (will Mrs Gandhi do the same, I wonder, if, as is rumoured, she acquires Presidential powers in 1982?). In this respect, at least, the mistakes of the Shah (and perhaps of the Marcos's?) are not being repeated.
14. With one or two exceptions (see Annex 3), the internal
political situation in all the countries I visited seemed to be quiet. The students, even in places like Thailand and Indonesia appeared, for the time being at least, to have lost their fire. Only in Dacca did I come across a student demonstration and that was more of an open-air meeting on some internal problem of university
administration. It should be added in fairness that the students
had obviously been active during the recent elections in Bangladesh; never have I seen walls so daubed with political graffiti as in Dacca University (this was also the case in the city as a whole). In view of the economic disparities throughout Asia, however, it would be
unwise to view the present quiescence of the students as anything but
a lull in at least some of the countries I visited.
15. Over the past few years it might have been thought that serious social-political difficulties would be caused by the influx of refugees into various countries of the region. The reasons why such has not been the case were clearer to me after having visited refugee camps in Hong Kong and Pakistan. The first was housed in nissen huts on an old army camp in a built-up area of Kowloon; the second was in tents pitched in arid countryside on the banks of a dried-up
watercourse a few miles from Peshawar. In both cases I was struck
by the care and dedication with which the camps were administered,
the general cleanliness, the kindness to the children and the efforts
made, if not to integrate the communities into the host country, at
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