TNAG-1181-FCO40-1483-Resettlement-of-Vietnamese-refugees-from-Hong-Kong-into-the--1982 — Page 112

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CONVERSATION WITH DEPUTY UNHCR

1 At lunch I spoke as agreed with the Deputy UNHCR about the situation in Hong Kong; preparations for the informal meeting of the UNHCR Executive Committee on 23 June; and Mr Hartling's position.

2 The following is the gist of our conversation:

(i) Hong Kong

Mr Smyser had been impressed by his visit to Hong Kong, which he mentioned he had visited a number of times previously; and had enjoyed it. He had noted the disturbances at Kat Tak North shortly after his departure and said that he had not found them surprising. As he saw it, the underlying economic situation had changed for the worse and the possibility of offering refugees work outside the camps had correspondingly diminished. If the Hong Kong Government found it necessary to keep the refugees in closed camps, he for one would not find that grounds for complaint. On the other hand, he would be worried if Hong Kong changed its policy as regards the admission of refugees from Vietnam.

3 I said that the policy of the Hong Kong Government so far went beyond their international obligations in the sense that not only did they apply a policy of non-refoulement but that the refugees also had a chance to work. It was ironic that Hong Kong was to a certain extent penalised because of its policies. Mr Smyser accepted this. I asked him whether he thought the American Immigration and Naturalisation Service was influenced by the fact that refugees in Hong Kong could work. He said that in his view this was the case.

One reason was that the refugees in Hong Kong were not quite as deferential and as amenable as some refugees handled by the INS. For example, they often wanted to bypass the refugee processing centre at Bataan and go straight to the United States since they could speak English and were independent, and arrived, as he put it, "loaded down with cameras, hi-fis and Walkmen and all the other products of the East". All of this suggested that they were not so much refugees as economic migrants. Yet they were in fact refugees in the sense that they could not go back to Vietnam.

4 As regards the situation in the area generally, Mr Smyser said that he was moderately optimistic, provided - and he realised that it was a big proviso that repatriation to Cambodia could get going. He was also moderately optimistic about the "orderly depature scheme" from Vietnam. But he said that his reasons for taking this view were entirely cynical. Just as the Vietnamese were apparently ready to supply the Soviet Union with Vietnamese

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