TNAG-1423-FCO40-1906-Vietnamese-refugees-in-Hong-Kong-general-1985 — Page 130

CONFIDENTIAL

(c)

Legal questions may be raised about the closed centre policy;

(d) The local Chinese population of Hong Kong consider it unjust

that Vietnamese are allowed to remain indefinitely in Hong Kong

while illegal immigrants from China are repatriated. They find it

difficult to accept that public money should be spent on building,

equipping and running refugee centres rather than on social services

and other amenities for the local population. (The cost to the Hong

Kong government of providing asylum for Vietnamese refugees in the

next financial year will be HK$ 103 million, of which HK$ 22.5

million will probably be reimbursed by UNHCR). There is a general

feeling that Hong Kong is being asked to shoulder more than its fair

share of the Vietnamese refugee burden.

(e) Finally, it is possible that, if the problem continues unsolved

or becomes more serious, we may face Chinese pressure to set our

house in order before 1997.

VI OPTIONS

13. Following is an examination of options by which we might try to

(a) reduce the rate of arrival, (b) increase the rate of departure.

Some options considered by Ministers before and rejected are

included for the sake of completeness.

A.

Options designed to reduce the rate of arrival

Tow newly arriving boats out to sea

14. (a)

Macau, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Brunei have all done this,

but there have been few reports of such action recently. The Hong

Kong Government have contingency plans for towing vessels with

illegal immigrants, including refugees, outside the limits of Hong

Kong's waters in an emergency, but have

but have never adopted such a policy

in respect of Vietnamese refugees. In reality, the inevitable

public exposure and the simple physical difficulty of towing boats

out against their will in an area with no safe havens, would make

such a policy impossible to implement. In March 1984 in the course

of a general review of Hong Kong's refugee problems, Ministers

decided that turning boats out

to sea, even if they were repro-

visioned, would expose us to severe criticism on human rights grounds,

particularly so if any vessel were to sink with loss of life after

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CONFIDENTIAL