TNAG-1527-FCO40-2091-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-refugees-general-1986 — Page 276

TKK 243 13 RCEIVED IN REGISTRY

Boreign and Commonwealth Office

London SW1A 2AH

From the Secretary of State INDEX

07 JAN1986

IN AY

akan

2 January 1986

Thank you for your letter of 18 December enclosing

a letter from your constituent, Mrs D Course of 8 Connor Way, Gatley, Cheadle, Cheshire, about the Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong awaiting resettlement.

We have been seeking a solution to this problem since

Vietnamese refugees 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

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 camp" policy in

order to deter would-be refugees from travelling to Hong

Kong. This has reduced markedly (by 53% in 1983 and 39% in 1984) the numbers arriving. 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

Rt Hon Alfred Morris MP

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