TNAG-1426-FCO40-1909-Vietnamese-refugees-in-Hong-Kong-general-1985 — Page 8

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2.

A.

Q.

A.

Are there cases where HMG cannot help?

HMG cannot help where a candidate:

a)

b)

c)

is shortly going into, is serving in or recently served in the SRV Armed Forces;

is someone who formerly served the Republic of (South) Vietnam in Government or Armed Forces and others who are in Re-education Camps except in a general way e.g. by making a joint EC demarche on behalf of certain categories of prisoners or all prisoners in general;

has skills too valuable to lose e.g. doctors, scientists, technicians;

d) is someone who has been released from a Re-education

Camp for less than a year;

e)

is someone who wishes to be reunified with family who are already overseas and who left Vietnam illegally e.g. by boat.

was issued

My/this case dates from .(1983) when with a VPL for the UK. After .(2) years, why cannot BE Hanoi push for their release?

There are still over 690 families remaining in Vietnam who applied for permission to enter UK, and were given Visa Promise Letters before March 1985 some 120 of these date back to 1982. The Embassy have a responsibility to all of those 690 and it would be inappropriate for them to select some cases over others who have waited for far longer. Moreover they can only intervene, like UNHCR, with any chance of success, where there are specific humanitarian grounds for doing so. To intervene without good reason uses up what little goodwill we may have and may be regarded as suspicious by the Vietnamese authorities. We may indeed by untimely interventions actually harm those waiting to obtain their exit visas.

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