TNAG-1427-FCO40-1910-Vietnamese-refugees-in-Hong-Kong-general-1986 — Page 169

Mr Nash, SEAD

HKK 243/5

Reference

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VIETNAMESE REFUGEES:

1.

BATAAN RPC

Thank you for your minute of 25 September. Obviously it is for the Home Office to decide, in consultation with the British Refugee Council (BRC), whether the facilities available in the UK are adequate to receive the 500 or so cases now expected from Hong Kong and elsewhere in South East Asia. I gather from my discussion today with Mr Lewis, Voluntary Services Unit, Home Office, that BRC have satisfied the Home Office that facilities are indeed adequate for this purpose.

so.

2.

For the record, I spoke to Mr Lewis (in Mrs Lee's absence) to correct the statement in para 2 of your minute that "being sent to Bataan was 'very unpopular' in the Hong Kong camps". I am sure (subject to any further comments from Hong Kong) that this is not

My own experience from three years' recent involvement with the Hong Kong camps is that Bataan is seen as a very attractive destination, representing as it does a "passport" to an increasingly elusive resettlement place somewhere (usually, but not always, the USA) in the west. I think that Mrs Lee may have been thinking of an incident in 1980 when several hundred refugees from one Hong Kong camp refused to go to Bataan because they had heard "horror stories" of the conditions there. They were the very first Hong Kong group to be selected for Bataan, and the only ones to refuse: the stories were soon corrected by reports from subsequent groups that facilities in Bataan were generally better than anywhere else.

3.

I passed the gist of this on to Mr Lewis: I believe it is important that we do not allow the Home Office to argue that Bataan should not be used on the basis that refugees do not want to go there.

CE Leeks

Hong Kong Department

WH 312

233 4439

26 September 1985

сс

Chancery Manila

Chancery Washington

C T Wood Esq, Assistant Political

Adviser, Hong Kong

нкс 24315

RECEIVED IN REGISTRY

27 SEP 1985

DESK OFFICER

INDEX

PA

Action Taken

CODE 18-77

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