TNAG-1417-FCO40-1900-Hong-Kong-Parliamentary-Sub-Committee-on-Race-Relations-and--1985 — Page 91

BRITISH REFUGEE COUNCIL

ADDITIONAL SUBMISSION TO THE SUB-COMMITTEE ON RACE RELATIONS AND IMMIGRATION

PART III VIETNAMESE REFUGEES IN HONG KONG.

Introduction

We are grateful for the opportunity to submit to you further comments, and questions following on the answers that the Minister of State the Home Office made to the questions addressed to him by SCORRI on December 17th 1984.

1. The Minister referred to 184 people who had been admitted to Britain who did not qualify under the family reunion criteria during the year 1983 and gave this as an example of the flexibility with which the Home Office applies

the criteria.

We assume that this figure refers to the 184 parents of unaccompanied refugee children referred to in para 12 of the Home Office's memorandum to the Sub- committee on the admission and settlement of refugees from Vietnam.

While we warmly welcomed the generous decision that was made for this particular group of people, this hardly demonstrates, in our view, a flexible attitutde in the day-to-day application of the family reunion criteria which relate to a variety of family relationships.

2. We noted the Minister's reference to the United Kingdom's

to the United Kingdom's continuing obli- gation to give refuge, to all those picked up on the High Seas by British ships, and were grateful for that. However, we think it important to point out that Britain is now a signatory of the RASRO agreement drawn up by the UNHCR. Under this agreement which, we understand, will shortly be implemented, responsibility for giving refuge to those picked up at sea will be shared between all the signatories. Each signatory country will accept during the course of a year an agreed proportion of all those picked up at sea which in the case of the UK will be a maximum of 150 out of the first 4,000 rescued. As a result of this agreement our obligation will be much more clearly limited than it has been in the past. In addition many of those we do accept are likely already to have family connections in Britain.

3. We fully support the idea that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office should be asked to take an initiative aimed at getting commitments from other countries of secondary resettlement to accept further refugees from Hong Kong as a response to an initiative by Britain. We would be only too happy to do anything we could to facilitate such an initiative.

4. We fully support, too, the analysis of Miss Short. It has for some time been the approach of our Asia Committee that the question of the refugees in Hong Kong could not be seen in isolation from the far wider underlying factors involved. We were very much heartened by the announcement that the committee would seek to talk to a representative of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. We very much hope that Britain can be persuaded together with our European partners to take an initiative that may result in the provision of basic humanitarian aid for the stricken country of Vietnam. This

would, in our view, be a far more effective way of stemming the outflow of Boat People from Vietnam, than any policy of deterrence based

on the conditions prevailing in the closed camps of Hong Kong.