OXFAM
December 10 1988
The Rt Hon Margaret Thatcher
Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
London SW1A 2AA
England
樂施會
PA
183
Dear Prime Minister
Oxfam Hong Kong is an independent development and relief agency. We write to you on behalf of the 15,000 Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong.
You will be aware that this year for the first time since 1979 - the number of refugees in Hong Kong has substantially increased. This has been due to a large influx in the first half of the year and the continuing reluctance of the international community to meet its commitment to the refugees and to Hong Kong.
You will recall that the Geneva Conference in 1979 agreed that places such as Hong Kong would provide first asylum for boat people and that other countries would provide places of final settlement. However, with a few notable exceptions, the international community has not observed the Geneva agreement, with the result that thousands of innocent people are stranded here in Hong Kong.
These people are labelled as 'refugees', nothing more than troublesome statistics, but we know them as men, women and children - families who have fled Vietnam at great personal risk in the hope of building themselves a better future. The waste of human talent and energy as these people are ignored by the world is tragic.
We appreciate that the British experience of re-settling Vietnamese refugees has not been entirely happy, and we also acknowledge that Britain is under immigration pressure from other quarters. Nevertheless, we do strongly urge you to set an example to the rest of the world by increasing your government's quota of refugees resettled from Hong Kong.
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Room 603A, Hong Kong Bank Building, 673 Nathan Road, Mongkok, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
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