TNAG-1424-FCO40-1907-Vietnamese-refugees-in-Hong-Kong-general-1985 — Page 123

Telephone: 01-930 0922/6

Telex: 25827 KUNDU

Ref:

Lord Ennals

Chairman

Asia Committee

The British Refugee Council

Bondway House

3/9 Bondway

LONDON SW8 1SJ

PAPUA NEW GUINEA HIGH COMMISSION

14 Waterloo Place

London SW1R 4AR

20 February 1985

Dear Lord Ennals,

I refer to your letter of 7 February 1985 (received at this mission on 12 February) and regret that I was unable to communicate with you at all in relation to your letter of 12 June 1984. Despite a thorough examination of our records, this Mission is not in possession of the earlier letter.

Nevertheless, may I stress that this Mission does its utmost to attend to enquiries about Papua New Guinea or particularly the common land border with Indonesia (Irian Jaya) and the intermittent problem of the movement of people from Irian Jaya into Papua New Guinea territory. Our aim in responding to such enquiries on the border and the influx of border crosses is to ensure that the views and position of the Papua New Guinea Government are presented correctly and in a balanced way in the face of undue controversy. The record of my Government's handling of the situation, in particular the outflow of border crosses at times in large numbers, speaks for itself since Papua New Guinea became an independent state with its own democratic institutions.

Let me emphasise that the influx of the 7-thousand or more people from Irian Jaya into our territory since last February was not the result of actions by the Papua New Guinea Government. Therefore events in Irian Jaya have an impact on Papua New Guinea. Quite understandably, the people and government of Papua New Guinea have been and are concerned (and the Government's concern has been

restated to the Indonesian Government on a number of occasions) over the large number of border crossers scattered in more than a dozen or so hamlets and villages in the most difficult terrain of Papua New Guinea.

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