TNAG-1180-FCO40-1482-Resettlement-of-Vietnamese-refugees-from-Hong-Kong-into-the--1982 — Page 67

R.D. Clift, Esq.

CONFIDENTIAL

-2-

3rd May, 1982

15% of arrivals instead of 80%. There was no indication that 1982 arrivals could be less than 1981 (8,000) (and it happens that 465 refugees arrived in Hong Kong in the week ending 30th April). Hong Kong's refugee population would therefore begin to rise, and there would be no prospect of resettlement. Although the problem was not a large one, it caused peculiar difficulties for Hong Kong because of Hong Kong's policy on immigration from China which meant that even close relatives of Hong Kong residents who entered Hong Kong illegally were repatriated. The Chinese population tolerated the efforts involved in giving asylum to refugees because in Geneva in 1979 the international community had recognised that this was an international problem and had adopted measures to ensure that the refugees' stay in places of first asylum was only temporary. Formally speaking, refugees were landed in Hong Kong against an undertaking from UNHCR of their best efforts to resettle them. The drying up of quotas and the new US measures would make this guarantee meaningless for all but a small percentage of future arrivals. Because of our immigration policy, towards China, the suggestion made at the recent resettlement meeting in Geneva that the hard core might be absorbed in Hong Kong was unacceptable. To do so would encourage large numbers of the 265,000 refugees resettled in China to come to Hong Kong: 14,000 had already tried this and had been repatriated.

4. I said that UNHCR's optimism about the prospects of negotiating repatriation arrangements with the Vietnamese was in some ways encouraging. But the arguments deployed by the Vietnamese seemed illogical and perhaps indicated that they were not really serious about repatriation. The assessment of our own Vietnam watchers in London and Hanoi was that anyone who left Vietnam illegally thereby rendered himself suspect and would never be accepted back by the Vietnamese.

5. The upshot of subsequent discussion was that UNHCR remain firmly convinced that the general trend is towards a cessation of the flow, after which resettlement countries would be much more amenable to a final effort to clear the camps. We in Hong Kong, not surprisingly, concentrate on the immediate practical and political difficulties posed by a continuing steady flow of arrivals and the reduction of departures to a trickle. I put UNHCR on notice that in the circumstances we were considering our policy towards refugees and that we might decide to adopt a policy of detaining them in closed camps as was done elsewhere in the region.

Wir

Hours

Bun

(L. M. Davies) Secretary for Security

CONFIDENTIAL