TNAG-1427-FCO40-1910-Vietnamese-refugees-in-Hong-Kong-general-1986 — Page 42

With the assistance of various voluntary agencies the Home Office are now making practical arrangements for the arrival in the UK of this new group of refugees from Hong Kong. (As Miss Dew may be aware, we hve already accepted some 19,000 Indo-Chinese, mainly from Hong Kong, for resettlement since 1975, and we also continue to accept family reunion and ship rescue cases.) The Home Office expect these to arrive at a rate of about 40 a month over the next year or so. The first two families (comprising 20 refugees altogether) arrived in November, and have been offered accommodation in Leeds and

Nottingham.

The Home Office expect the next group to arrive in early January.

Meanwhile, in cooperation with the Hong Kong Government and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), we are actively pressing other resettlement countries also to take additional numbers of refugees from Hong Kong. It is still too early to assess the overall results of our efforts; but there have been some encouraging results Australia, for example, has announced that it will take an additional 200 refugees from Hong Kong between now and June 1986.

Turning now to Miss Dew's points about the camps in Hong Kong, I would like to stress the size of the task. that Hong Kong has faced in caring for the 100,000 Vietnamese refugees who have arrived in the territory since 1975. None have been turned away. They have all been granted temporary asylum by the Hong Kong Government and accommodated in camps until resettlement places overseas could be found for them. This is a considerable achievement for such a small, overcrowded territory. Hong Kong has also itself accepted some 14,500 displaced Indo-Chinese for permanent settlement in the territory.

Initially, all Vietnamese refugees arriving in Hong Kong were acommodated in open camps run by UNHCR in cooperation with various voluntary agencies. Since July 1982, in order to discourage others in Vietnam from travelling to Hong Kong despite their declining prospects of permanent resettlement elsewhere, newly arriving refugees have been placed in closed camps, from which they are not permitted to seek outside employment. camps are run by the Hong Kong Government with assistance from UNHCR and voluntary agencies.

These

The Jubilee Camp, where I understand Miss Dew worked, is an open camp located in Sham Shui Po, which is in the main urban area of the Kowloon Peninsula.

It has