TNAG-1903-FCO40-2705-Hong-Kong-cabinet-meetings-on-Vietnamese-refugees-1990 — Page 55

CONFIDENTIAL

CONFIDENTIAL

VIETNAMESE BOAT PEOPLE

The Committee considered a Memorandum by the Secretary of State

for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (OD(89)9) on the Vietnamese

boat people. They also had before them a letter from the Chief Secretary Treasury to the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary

dated 6 June 1989.

June

THE FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH SECRETARY said

that the

there were now

problem of V ethames

ese boat people in Hong Kong was of long standing but had now reached critical proportions;

over 38,000 Vietnamese in Hong Kong and the total was increasing

by

much as

as 1,200 a day. This had created severe practical

problems for the Colony and had been damaging to morale. The United Kingdom had spend gnificant sums to alleviate the problem,

but with only palliative effect. The task at the International

Conference on Indo-Chinese Refugees

Refugees at Geneva on 13/14 June,

which he

he would be attending would be to provide relief for Hong

Kong by establishing a Regional Processing Centre elsewhere for

genuine refugees and to secure-

return of non-refugees to

Vietnam.

Short of physically preventing arriving boat people from landing in Hong Kong and elsewhere,

latter objective could only

be achieved by persuading the Government of Vietnam to accept

their return on

on a non-voluntary basis. This in turn would act as a

disincentive to further outflows from vietnam

from Vietnam once it became known

that Hong Kong was not an automatic haven of refuge. It would

however be hard to persuade the United States necessity for compulsory repatriation because

the Vietnamese stemming from the Vietnam

had to be made.

Government of the

heir attitudes to

War

the

attempt

CONFIDE

In discussion, the following points were made

The consequence of the policy of first asylum,

other

countries in the area did not observe, was to burden Hong

a.

Kong with responsibility for accommodating

aliens for whom neither the Colony nor the

had any responsibility,

large

numbers

of

United

whereas Chinese who arrived

Kingdom

illegally

1

CONFIDENTIAL

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