From The Minister of State
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
Mr. Benten
1
ра
14 January 1986
MKK 243/3
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY
16 JAN1986
DESK OFFICER
INDEX
PA
RECISTRY
Action Taken
bur Christopher,
S
Thank you for your letter of 2 January enclosing a letter from your constituent, Mrs J Dod of Greenacres, Bank Top Lane, Grindleford, Sheffield, S30 1HS, about the Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong awaiting resettlement.
We have been seeking a solution to this problem since refugees from both south and north Vietnam began to arrive in Hong Kong in 1975; 104,000 have reached Hong Kong since then, and all have been granted temporary asylum by the Hong Kong Government: none have been turned away. Hong Kong currently has some 9,500 Vietnamese refugees awaiting resettlement, more than anywhere else in South East Asia. Initially newly arriving refugees were accommodated in open camps, from which they were able to seek outside employment. At first they were resettled reasonably quickly. However by 1982 the rate of resettlement had begun to decrease, and the Hong Kong Government saw no alternative but to introduce the "closed camps" to which your constituent refers, in order to discourage would-be refugees from travelling to Hong Kong. This policy has markedly reduced the numbers arriving in the territory. We have always regarded the closed camps as a temporary arrangement which should cease to be necessary when the flow of illegal departures from Vietnam reduced to a trickle.
Within the constraints of the closed camp policy, the Hong Kong Government seeks to do all that it can to make conditions in the camps as humane as possible. It provides the refugees with accommodation, food, medical attention, and educational, reactional and vocational training facilities, and employs specially recruited and trained staff to work in the camps. Voluntary agencies provide a range of social services to refugees in each of the camps and representatives from among the refugees are able to discuss various aspects of camp life at daily meetings with the Camp Superintendents. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Mr Poul Hartling, visited one of the closed camps last May and said that, although he did not like the idea of such camps he "found
/the
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.