6.
Q.
A.
practicable. With nowhere further to go, boat people would simply scuttle their boats and jump into the sea. We would have to pick them up, and so be back where we started.
But, most simply of all, any action of this sort would be totally unacceptable in humanitarian terms.
What happens if, despite all efforts, there are still boat people in Hong Kong in 1997 when China reassumes sovereignty over the territory?
The Chinese have put us under pressure to accept responsibility for ensuring the problem of Vietnamese boat people is solved before 1997. We have said that it is our firm intention to try to achieve this. We are stressing to all our international partners that it is essential that whatever solution is agreed at the International Conference should send the right message clearly to the people of Vietnam, and that those who are now leaving in search only of a better life should realise that they do not have any future outside Vietnam.
Iramatic
7.
Q.
But the Chinese have the power already to ensure that the Vietnamese boat people problem does not continue until 1997, if they are prepared to take the steps needed to prevent people from making their way along the South China Coast, with regular stops for food and fuel, to Hong Kong. We have put this forcibly to the Chinese. I have sent a personal message to their Foreign Minister on the subject. But the domestic inflow of this year shows that such measures as they have taken have had little effect.
Ever since 1979, Vietnamese have known that to get to a better life, all they have to do is board a boat to Hong Kong. How can you hope to change a practice that has gone on for ten years, and has given rise to understandable
expectations in just a few months
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.