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[Mr. Keith Best]
South-East Asia (Refugees)
14 MAY 1985
There is one matter to do with the closed camps which the Hong Kong Government can remedy immediately.' From my talks with Government officials there, I am optimistic that the Government are on the verge of a change and need just a gentle push from my hon. Friend the Minister of State. That change would be to allow refugees in closed camps to join their spouses in open ones. One woman I met in Chi Ma Wan had been there with her two children for two years unable to join her husband who was living in an open camp and working. This is inhumane. It is no good suggesting that those in open camps can give up work and join spouses in closed ones. Realistically, the concession must be the other way round.
Since May 1981, Vietnamese refugees settled here have had applied to them the same criteria as for other citizens for family reunion--that they can be joined by minors under the age of 18 and spouses but not by others, unless they are elderly dependants or there are compassionate grounds. Unaccompanied minors, for example, do not qualify to have families join them. Refugee agencies give a much broader definition of close relatives, as we did before 1981. I believe that my hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State, Home Office does the best he can, but I urge the Government to give a broader interpretation. I should like to know whether other recipient countries adopt similar restrictive criteria.
More needs to be done, but they are matters mainly for my hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State, Home Office, so I shall not deal with them in detail now. I believe that we now need to concentrate assistance on those areas in which Vietnamese refugees settled here have congregated following the disastrous initial dispersal policy. If it is right for other ethnic minorities, it is certainly right for this industrious and decent people, for whose character and ability to adapt I have the highest regard. I urge the Department of Health and Social Security to look carefully at the effect on insecure refugees of the board and lodging regulations and to exempt refugees if the regulations work unfairly against them. We owe a duty to all our citizens, including those from overseas who enrich our society. Many such points were raised last Thursday during an Adjournment debate by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley), who has apologised to me for not being able to be here tonight.
The situation in south-east Asia has been destabilised by the occupation of, first, Laos and then Cambodia by Vietnam, which has the third or fourth largest standing army in the wild. One hundred and fifty thousand Vietnamese troops are stationed in Cambodia, and after the recent offensive which pushed into Thailand the forces of the coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, a Soviet-backed communist regime's forces now lap up against the border. There are 250,000 Cambodian refugees within Thailand and I ask my hon. Friend the Minister of State whether he does not think it necessary for further international action to be taken to deal with this massive problem.
The United States is deeply concerned not just about any possible further aggression against Thailand and compromise of its territorial integrity which would involve American troops once more in south-east Asia but also about the refugee problem, which is insupportable for Thailand. That country has just persuaded the United
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States that it must have F16 fighters. All around, the countries of south-east Asia are arming. The situation is : critical.
Personally I doubt whether Vietnamese adventurism would risk a major conflagration, but the danger must be met. After its considerable losses in the abortive action against the northern part of Vietnam in 1979, China is unlikely to try to force the issue militarily, although it will continue to support the coalition Government, in particular the brutal Khmer Rouge.
Cambodia is going through an agony. There is an active policy by the invaders of Vietnamisation, particularly in the schools, and an attempt to suppress Cambodian culture, as well as reported atrocities. However welcome the Vietnamese may have been in 1979 rescuing the Cambodians from the loathsome Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot, they have now become unwelcome oppressors, condemned by the United Nations and the international community. It has been said that, as long as the Khmer Rouge cast their shadow over the country, the Vietnamese are likely to remain and the people of Kampuchea will be glad of their protection. That is open to question, but the Khmer Rouge are no friends of democracy.
Of the two other members of the coalition, Son Sann is presently too weak, though perhaps the most favoured by the west. We must look to Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who is the key to a resolution of the problem, who may be able to establish a genuinely neutral Cambodia. This might persuade the Vietnamese, with much guerrilla
fighting ahead of them otherwise and continuing P
international criticism, to withdraw if they could be satisfied that Cambodia would not be a threat on their borders. Prince Sihanouk has a home in Peking and could well be acceptable to the Chinese but act as a buffer against any thoughts of extension of influence from that quarter which would be met with concern by Indonesia.
There is no easy solution, and one is still a long way off, as acknowledged by Senor Perez de Cuellar. Yet a time bomb is ticking away in south-east Asia which could threaten world peace. It is for that reason that Great Britain has a vested interest in seeking a workable solution, along with other nations that wish to save a brave and deserving people from suffering.
1.29 am
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Richard Luce): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Mr. Best) on raising in this Adjournment debate the subject of the crisis in south-east Asia and the refugee problem. He addressed it with the greatest thoroughness and has shown that he has not only a great interest in the problem but a very great knowledge of it. He spoke with great feeling. He is the chairman of the British Committee for Refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia of the British Refugee Council and does a great deal of very important work in that area. I am glad too that my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Barnes (Mr. Hanley) is present because he takes a close interest in the affairs of refugees, and of Vietnamese refugees, particularly in Hong Kong, and has been active in the Select Committee that has been looking into these matters.
My hoa. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn is absolutely right in drawing attention to the root cause of the whole problem of Vietnamese refugees. It lies, as he said, in Hanoi. The oppressive foreign and domestic policies of the
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