CONFIDENTIAL
Foreign and Commonwealth Office London SW1A 2AH
Telephone 01233 3184
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*
Sir Philip laddon-Cave KBE CMG
Chief Secretary
Government Secretariat
HONG KONG
Your reference
Our reference
Date
2 February 1982
HAK 243/1
KOKEIVED IN GAINSTEY NA $1
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DESK OSN.*
112
Dear Philips,
THE OUTFLOW FROM VIETNAM (118
Likk 243/2
1981
Hkk 243/2 (12
(127)
IN
1981
3
AP3/21
See(17
In Alan Donald's letter of 17 December 1931 he said that we would be looking at the issues raised in your letter of 2 December 1981 as soon as we had comments from posts and that we would then submit to Ministers. Although we have so far only had comments from Kuala Lumpur we have put the papers to Ministers in view of the request in Hong Kong Telegram No 41 for an early reply.
5
2.
We agree that on present evidence the net number of refugees in Hong Kong is likely to start to rise in the summer, and may not show any significant decrease over the whole of 1982. The options spelt out in your paragraph 8 seem to cover the full range of responses. We do not, however, think that a threat of repatriation is a starter. We believe that the Vietnamese would not accept the refugees back but more worrying is the panic exodus from Vietnam that such a threat might provoke.
3.
18
(34)
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We certainly agree that a policy of humane deterrence keeping refugees in closed camps is not worth the gamble of public funds. Nor would we wish you to have to accept, at this stage at least, the hard core of difficult cases for resettlement in Hong Kong. We do however think that it would be worthwhile asking the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva what they propose to do about them. We realise that there probably is no answer at this stage but it would be useful for them to be brought un against the 'residue' problem at an early stage. At the same time we can ask them about 'new' resettlement destinations. We accent that these are unlikely to appeal to the refugees and someone would have to pay but believe that is worth trying.
4.
The only avenue which seems to us to offer any hope of getting the numbers significantly down in Hong Kong is through increased offtake to existing major resettlement countries. We believe that the best approach is through UNIICR. Subject to Peter Marshall's views, this might be done by his speaking to the Commissioner personally. We will suggest that UNIICR should look primarily to the Americans but also tackle the Canadians, the Australians and the French. We would follow up by sneaking to their missions here. The best ground for urging a UNHCR
CONFIDENTIAL
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