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A ALIA MU
чт ост 27 OCT 1988
ост
Bernard Levin
16
The point of no return
no
will say this for the Foreign Office: it is consistent in its villainy. Indeed, it is more than consistent; it is pos- itively fair. We all know by now, if only from the Foreign Secretary's article in this paper on September 28, that the hand- over of nearly six million British dependents to China in 1997 is
be carried
out with enforceable safeguards against the imposition on Hong Kong of the full weight of the fully totalitarian state that China is. (In the article which provoked Sir Geoffrey's reply I offered him the one decent excuse available for what he is plotting that there are no enforceable safe- guards, and it is impossible for Britain to hold Hong Kong free against the might of China. He rejected my lifeline, and made clear that the Foreign Office would rely on the "agreement" now being drawn up; no doubt he will then sign it, knowing that it is wholly illusory.)
Now for the consistency. Over the years since the end of the Vietnam war, a number of exceptionally brave and resolute Vietnamese have managed to get out of their country. Some of these "boat people", as they have come to be known, have found havens in
various countries; there are even some in Britain. (No one will ever know how many tens or hundreds of thou- sands have died or been mur- dered in attempting their escape.)
A number, estimated at about 9,000, have fetched up in Hong Kong. There they have been incarcerated, without trial and indeed without being charged with anything, in camps, forbid. den to seek work. Yet they now face a greater peril than the storms, sharks and pirates they braved to escape from Vietnam
the British Foreign Office. For it has been made clear that these refugees are to be sent back.
This time, there is not even the defence of force majeure, the Vietnamese army is not going to invade Hong Kong to snatch its 27-OCT-E former citizens, and anyway Sir
Geoffrey could hardly avail him- self of that argument in straining
at the gnat of 9,000 Vietnamese when he is swallowing the camel of the entire population of Hong Kong.
A new line altogether has been spun; the boat people, it is said, are not refugees from persecu- tion, but seeking a better life elsewhere. (That, incidentally, adds a retrospective footnote to the Vietnam war; do you remem- ber how those in the West who longed for a communist victory assured us that the moment it was secured a united Vietnam would be turned overnight into something indistinguishable from Paradise?)
The Foreign Office has been understandably coy about how it will get the Vietnamese to go home; if it comes to that, it is being even more tongue-tied in the matter of providing evidence for the claim that these are not genuine refugees. Nobody has used the word force yet, let alone the thing itself, but men and women who have entrusted themselves to the Asian seas in cockleshells, knowing that thou- sands had already perished in the attempt, are surely not going back quietly.
F
irst, therefore, a cur- tain-raiser has been scripted and rehearsed; Opening Night is very near. The Foreign Of fice has found some 300 Viet- namese boat people who have pronounced themselves willing to return voluntarily to their native land. These people, we are told, have received various kinds of official financial assistance from Britain, or in plainer language, they have been bribed. out for They will soon Vietnam, possibly sent on their way with a speech by Lord Glenarthur (Sir Geoffrey can't be everywhere). They will then get a benign, and no less scrupulously rehearsed, welcome, and the Foreign Office will be able to say "See? They were all presented with enormous boxes of choc- olates what are the rest of you worrying about?”
set
Well, the better-educated of them may have read Nicholas Bethell's The Last Secret, or
JUNK
Nikolai Tolstoy's Victims of Yalta, in which case the answer to the Foreign Office's question, "what is there to worry about?" will be "you". That monstrous and unpardonable crime, in which hundreds of thousands of
and women innocent, men, children (together with a minor- ity of guilty ones) were deported to the Soviet Union, was carried out by a combination of deceit and force.
If some readers have only a vague impression of what hap- pened, let me sharpen it for them with a single vignette. As the trains gathered speed, many of the victims threw their infant children out of the windows, in the hope that some might sur- vive, be picked up, and escape
the certain death to which their
parents were going.
can hear Sir Geoffrey's gasp of indignation at my_compari- son; he may well offer The Times another article rebuking me for such intemperate language and assuring our readers that nothing like that would happen. And
wouldn't; but if quite possibly
I were a Vietnamese boat person I would much rather not chance it on Sir Geoffrey's say-so alone, particularly if I had been reading the latest bulletin on the Sino- British negotiations over Hong Kong.
I am not in touch with the Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong; so I appeal to my
friends there to pass the word. It is a simple word, and I imagine that
anything solidly fixed, or to one another; in any case, try to alert the press, as well as known sympathizers. Do not, in any circumstances, use weapons or even fists; rather, take a leaf out of CND's book lie down and go completely limp. Through- out, make as much noise as you possibly can, not only by shoul. ing but by banging on metal; you will be surprised how unsettling noise can be to people who know they are doing wrong.
And remember that if the authorities and their forces retire in the face of your resolution, it will only be to regroup or think up some more plausible tricks.
M
elodramatic, am I? Perhaps am: but again, if I were onc of the Vietnamese concerned, I doubt
if I would think so. This country used to have a fine record. second only to the United States, of generosity towards refugees. If it had been otherwise, I would not exist; both my father and my maternal grandparents could say of Britain "I was a stranger, and ye look me in.”
That record has been increas- ingly tarnished in the past few years, culminating in the in- famous decree that obliges those fleeing from persecution to seek the imprimatur of those who are persecuting them. But the whole- sale trans-shipment of thousands
most of those to whom it is of refugees back to the land they directed know it already.
First, and most important, do not believe anything whatever said in the form of assurance by any British politician or official, high or low, either in Hong Kong or from London. Second, and most particularly, refuse all in- vitations to leave the com- pounds in which you are living; include a claim that pretexts may you are going to a better camp, or that you are to be issued with new clothes, or that there is gainful work awaiting you. Third, keep together: prevent the authorities isolating groups of you anywhere in the camp. If pretexts run out, and there is an attempt at forcible seizure, tic or chain yourselves, in groups, to
had fled is something new and
worse; remember, apart from anything else, that some of the boat people in Hong Kong have been there for several years.
But see! Here comes the Foreign Secretary, no less, bear- ing assurances from the Viet- namese authorities that refugees returned to them en masse by force will not be punished or ili. treated in any way, apart, per- haps, from a few words of admonition and a wagged finger. But then, as with Hong Kong, if the assurances are worthless, il will not be the Foreign Secretary who suffers the consequences.
As they say at the end of the day's business in the House of Commons: Who goes home?
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