CONFIDENTIAL
(c) Legal questions may be raised about the closed centre policy;
(a) 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 welfare
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
12.
OPTIONS
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
13. (a)
lunits of Hong Kong
waters
an
❝t of
Tow newly arriving boats out to sea Macau, Singapore, 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 Square boundary in emergency, but have never implemented such a policy in re
regfeat Vietnamese refugees. 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 reprovisioned, would
expose us to severe criticism on human rights grounds, particularly
so if any vessel were to sink with loss of life after being towed
ве
out to sea.
breach of
our
in
on bivil + Political
In such circumstances we should also probably be
obligations under the Inle for latenationl Rights (ond, inhuman or
Coverant
degrading treatment).
CONFIDENTIAL
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Private notes are available after approval.