TNAG-1790-FCO40-2550-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-refugees-resettlement-in-third-countri-1988 — Page 71

British Embassy

RESTRICTED

Britannia House rue Joseph | 28 1040 Brussels

Telephone (02) 217 90 00

Telex 22703

Ms Judith Slater

HKD

FCO

Dear Judith,

VIETNAMESE REFUGEES IN HONG KONG

Make sur

87

is

"Delpinn" an form for futur

ref

31 Cty poethevent file

20 September 1988

MCD 243/7

06 98

он

18/10

1. On 19 September, Sarah Wu (Hong Kong Government Office) and I called on Jacques Lacroix, responsible for refugee policy in the Belgian MFA, to discuss the problem of Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong. We took the opportunity to brief him on the recent contacts with Vietnam (Hong Kong telno 2990 to FCO and your telno 2070 to Hong Kong) and repeated our request for Belgian support for our new policy.

2.

We asked Lacroix to explain the current Belgian policy on Vietnamese refugees. Lacroix said that Belgium had initially agreed to take in a number of refugees (about 3000), but their quotas were now full. The only Vietnamese refugees who could now enter Belgium were those who had very close family links with Vietnamese already in Belgium (children under 18 or spouses) or were picked up at sea by Belgian ships. In 1987, Belgium had accepted approximately 40 refugees from Hong Kong in an exchange with the Americans for a similar number of refugees picked up at sea by a Belgian ship who had preferred to go to the United States.

3.

Lacroix said that the Belgian government currently had no plans to accept any other categories of Vietnamese refugees. Some NGOS where putting pressure on the Belgian government to accept more refugees (eg Medecine du Monde had requested a quota of 300 places) but the government had not acceeded to these. Lacroix added that the only way that the Belgian government might be prepared to accept further refugees from Hong Kong was if they were first sponsored by a Belgian NGO responsible for receiving refugees in Belgium. Such organisations, usually connected either to the church or to political parties, receive government grants. Lacroix said that church organisations such as Caritas had tended to sponsor Vietnamese refugees in Belgium in the past.

He hinted that Medecins du Monde were not well regarded by the Belgian government in this context.

RESTRICTED