TNAG-1786-FCO40-2546-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-refugees-closed-camp-policy-1988 — Page 65

POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION ...3

CAMP ADMINISTRATION

a branch of Camps are run by the Correctional Services Department (CSD), Hong Kong's prison security service. The CSD is responsible for security in the camps, for maintaining order through constant checks on refugees, for distributing food and for the administration of daily activities. The CSD holds sway over what presents refugees may accept from outsiders, and over who may visit the camps. The Department is known to have blacklisted a number of journalists sympathetic to the cause of Vietnamese in Hong Kong's closed camps.

CSD workers are always present during official visits to the camps. Letter 1 details the norms of CSD behaviour."If a delegation of British government officials comes to visit, the employees work very conscientiously to show they care for the refugees. In particular, in October 1987, some of them dressed up as refugees waiting to be examined by the doctor; they had thrown all refugees out of the clinic."

The CSD: refugee ratio in the camps averages about 1 :15. Senior staff are career prison officers, while juniors recruited to work in camps are given two weeks training.

Social Worker Ann Marie Tran was quoted by the South China Morning Post as saying: "There is a big communication problem, the CSD officers are often straight from school and do their best but they do not know how to look after these people."

Refugees say some CSD workers speak Vietnamese and are especially sympathetic to children. On the whole, however, it seems that fostering a sense of human dignity in the men and women in the camps is not a priority.

DISCIPLINE

Refugees and aid workers alike accuse some CSD workers of being unecesarily restrictive. People are locked in solitary confinement in open fronted cages known as "the monkey house" for minor infringement of camp rules. Teacher Ann Cusack says a 16 year-old in her class was confined for three weeks for sleeping through the daily head count. Such imprisonments go on a refugee's record and can significantly damage their prospects for resettlement.

SECURITY

Welfare workers say the need for a disciplinary administration has been superannuated. In a letter to Hong Kong Secretary for Security David Jeafferson in July 1987, former ISS education coordinator lan Champion said that the security risk posed by confrontation between rival Vietnamese factions on the streets of the colony had been surpassed by the social dangers of keeping people in idle confinement. This has already lead to gang activity within the camps.

"Sixteen to seventeen year-old boys have grown up over the last five years in an abnormal enclosed environment where traditional Vietnamese values and normal societal values...have ceased to exist. As a result of this, of witnessing the violence in the camp, of CSD reluctance to deal with the gangs, these people are almost unresettleable. No matter where they go, be it Vietnam, Hong Kong, America or Australia, they will cause trouble."

The view that confinement causes dangerous psychological pressure which may find its release in violence is shared by social workers and refugees. One of the younger school children wrote: "some of single men are crazy, because they have lived here for a long time and don't have any country to accept them". A student in the adult language programme wrote "I think, the person can bear alot but in the end there will be trouble."

While the CSD is efficient in preventing escape from the camps, it does not appear to deal with the security problem within the camps, and the gangs have free reign. The CSD will never enter the huts at night since they are jeered at and abused. Champion's letter says "The bad elements are allowed to roam free...Security provided at no small cost by the camp management extends no further than the perimeter of the fence itself."