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decision to refuse recent arrivals access to the UNHCR and our own closed centre policy. Refugees can be, and are, resettled from the closed centres as soon as they are admitted!
Hansson seems equally confused about our initiative last
year regarding long-stayers in the open centres and our factual presentation to arriving refugees of conditions in the closed centres. But I suspect that his confusion emanates from Cooper's inaccurate statistics on which I comment further below.
Resettlement offers for Refugees in Closed Centres
In
As you suspected, Cooper's statistics are incorrect. 1982, 179 of the 9,247 refugees who were resettled from Hong Kong came from closed centres. In 1983, 1,651 out of the 4,200 resettled were from closed centres; in 1984 the figure was 2,224 out of 3,694; in 1985 it was 2,464 out of 3,953. Up until the end of August this year, 1,948 out of a total of 2,990 had come from closed centres. Therefore, although we have never concerned ourselves with a ratio, it has been 1:2.5 in 1983, 1:1.7 in 1984, 1:1.6 in 1985 and 1:1.5 this year. So I don't really know what point Cooper is attempting to make.
As you are aware, the numbers taken from open and closed centres are a matter entirely for the resettlement countries. We cannot control their choice and the only initiative which might have caused Cooper's confusion was our request for help with the long-stayers in open centres last year.
This, as you are aware, was in response to a request from the UNHCR to help close one of the open centres. It has been largely successful and the amalgamation of Jubilee and Kai Tak should be completed in January next year.
J
Local integration Settlement in Hong Kong
I find the UNHCR's remarks offensive. We are very dis- appointed at the efforts of the UNHCR here to secure more refugees for local resettlement. The implication that we are imposing difficult conditions was also voiced by the High Commissioner when he was here. He was very strongly disabused of this idea. Our conditions are very relaxed. Only four refugees who have been submitted by the UNHCR have not accepted for resettlement. In each case the refugees them- selves withdrew because either they did not want to be resettled in Hong Kong or they did not have the necessary financial resources. These four are examples of poor case-work by the UNHCR rather than of onerous conditions imposed by the Hong Kong Government. We continually press the UNHCR to try harder. We have even conducted a seminar for UNHCR staff to help them in this matter.
The major resettlement countries share our concern about the ineffectiveness of the UNHCR in this matter. They, and we, would like to see the UNHCR conducting the propaganda programme which the UNHCR in Geneva seems to think is going on. We propose to discuss this
matter further with the main resettlement countries with a view to trying to convince prospective candidates that their chances of resettlement elsewhere are zero (remember that the condition for resettling these refugees in Hong Kong is that they have no chance of being resettled elsewhere).
If the UNHCR wishes us to transfer open centre refugees to a closed centre if they refuse local resettlement, then this should be put to us formally.
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/High Commissioner's Visit
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