TNAG-1850-FCO40-2625-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1989 — Page 119

1989-06-12 21:16

C01 RADIO TECH SERVICES.

01 928-8607

P.25

TRANSCRIPT 8

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SELECT COMMITTEE ON HONG KONG

12 JUNE 1989

SIR DAVID VILSON:

That particular thing is not a result of screening

but of the fact that we have quite simply run out of room

faced with these encrœus numbers and a total now of 43,000

boat people. Va simply ran out of room and temporarily wa

have had to keep people on their boats on remote islande,

on the Sako Islands (phon).

It was I believe far too

Screening, we have been making slow progress.

started off with a very very elaborate procese of

screening agreed with the UNHCR.

elaborate and far too slow, Ve have now screened s

1,800 people, of whom about 170 have been found to be

genuine refugees and the others found not to be genuine

refugees under the international criteria.

We are

now speading up the whole process because it

is quite wrong that people should have to spend so long in

detention centres waiting to be screened, as it is quite

wrong that they should spend months, years, in detention

centres, simply because they cannot be sent back to

Vietnam.

MR LESTBR:

One of my colleagues who has recently been said that

if 4,500 dogs were kept in similar conditions to one of

the carpe the RSPCA would find it very easy to whip up a

storm of protest in Britain. So I know from my own visits

to the campe just how awful they are.