TNAG-1611-FCO40-2214-Minutes-and-Hansards-of-the-Legislative-Council-of-Hong-Kong-1987 — Page 171

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past year. The Group has also stressed the importance, that

lenited Kingdom's other resettlement countries place on the UK special

Hony Kiny. responsibility towards its dependent territories,We have now been told emphatically by the Prime Minister that the United Kingstonis

resettlement commitments have been extended as far as possible

Canada has

for the time being: if this is so, then is it surprising that

lenited Kingston's other resettlement countries regard the resettlement of 234 refugees a year from Hong Kong as derisory? already admitted 724 refugees so far this year; Australia 483; and the USA 321. And how can we in Hong Kong ourselves avoid

lenited Kingdom's seeing the UK contribution as derisory when we now have an average of 300 refugees arriving in Hong Kong every month?

We hear much, Sir, about the duties and obligations of places of first asylum, but perhaps we should do well to reflect on the report on the United Nations Secretary General's

remarks at the 1979 Geneva Conference. The Secretary General

said then that it was essential that the rest of the world

should act in a decisive way to ease the tremendous burden imposed on the South East Asian states; that such action "would

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enable those states to adhere to the principle of first asylum; and that since the countries of first asylum were developing countries confronted with serious economic and

social constraints, it was essential that countries outside the

area assumed the principal responsibility for resettlement. Most important of all, the Secretary General emphasized that,

'while the countries of initial arrival were expected to respect fully the principle of first asylum for refugees coming there by land and sea, they in turn expected an assurance that they would not be burdened with the residual problems and that no refugees would stay in their countries for more than a

specified period. Sir, we no longer have that assurance and our burdens are increasing as is evidenced by this motion to retain Section 18(3). If the international understandings reached at the Geneva Conference are still valid, and if we are still fulfilling to the letter our obligations as a place of first asylum, then why is the rest of the world not playing its

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