TNAG-1274-FCO40-1624-Vietnamese-refugees-in-Hong-Kong-1983 — Page 56

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4.

Lord Ennals and Sir Arthur Peterson also suggested that there was a need for another, a mini, conference to revive international initiative on the Vietnamese refugees issue. BRC representatives were due to meet FCO officials

(Minister Richard Luce?) in January and Lord Ennals assured members that he would air Hong Kong's problems.

5.

The points above represent the broad consensus and conclusions of the meeting yesterday. You may, however, be interested to note some details of discussions. It was essentially "a report" at first hand by Lord Ennals and Martin Barber, fresh from Hong Kong.

6.

Martin Barber informed members that he could now better. appreciate the "very severe difficulties" facing the Hong Kong Government, the "most serious worry" being the effect on local opinion against the background of the Government's policy for repatriating illegal immigrants (possibly including some relatives of local Hong Kong citizens) from China. He thought that UK had been responsible for forcing the hard-line policy on HKG because of HMG's reluctance to give Hong Kong further relief. Agencies should therefore help Hong Kong by persuading HMG to take some action and by focusing attention on problem areas for Hong Kong. Never- theless, he expressed doubts about the "genuine effect" of any HMG effort.

7.

He then mentioned a number of points of concern over the closed camp policy and its practical implementation, including:

(a)

(b)

(c)

(a)

physical conditions in Cape Collinson;

the separation from social/family contact for the 600 single males in Cape Collinson;

separation of husband (in open camp before 2nd July 1982) from wife (in closed camp there- after);

language (English) inadequacy and a noticeable reluctance amongst some refugees to learn;

(e) the effect on the morale of inmates in closed camps by HKG leaving the management of closed camps with Correctional Services Department;

(£)

relevant to (e), the need for "self-policing" in closed camps.

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