two major themes.
First, there is the question of reassurance NOW to Hong Kongers that they will have a means of escape after 1997 if things go badly wrong and China goes berserk against the territory (which would be flatly against its constantly reiterated interest in maintaining a stable Hong Kong).
"Hong Kong has no future at all without constructive and regularised relationship with China"
Second, there is the task of doing everything conceivably possible to entrench. Hong Kong's status after 1997 as a separate with seperate legal, political, economic and social structures.
system,
HONG KONG
The guarantees for the future of Hong Kong can never be absolute. And they never have been in the past. Risk is embedded in the very nature of Hong Kong, half of whose inhabitants are themselves refugees from past political excesses in mainland China.
But within that ultimate limitation a great deal has been done (e.g. the truly amazing 'two systems one country' 1984 Agreement) and a great deal more can be done to give Hong Kong a very fair wind for decades ahead.
Britain does indeed have obligations to the territory. But they do not extend, in the Committee's view, to making implausible and unworkable promises about allowing millions to arrive here in Britain if the worst happened. That is a disaster the risk of which, however
remote, has
be to
faced internationally, and that, in the committee's
view, is the practical way forward.
They do, however, extend to a series of further helpful and generous-spirited measures which can make a lasting reality of the 1984 Joint Declaration, or treaty.
That is the course which is both honourable and realistic from our own point of view at Westminister and best and most secure for the people of Hong Kong in the years ahead.
A positive virtue can be made out of the current situation of fear and apprehension providing we act with sympathy and strategic vision during this last scene of the last act of the post-imperial age.
Instead of being reviled, Britain could then show that it was a trusted partner and central player in the coming decades of expansion in the Asia - Pacific region. But we need to move swiftly and boldly.
F
or a week or so in June the plight of the Vietnamese boat people in Hong Kong hit the headlines. The tiny overcrowded colony was full up. Something had to be done. Britain was determined not to do it. So the boat people had to be put on that long international agenda of "things needing to be done”. Sometime. Then it was submerged by the even bigger, and even more emotive, issue of passports and British nationality and the visit of Sir
Geoffrey Howe.
The problem hasn't gone away. It's merely got worse. The boat people keep on coming, sometimes hundreds a day, usually about a thousand a week. Weather-wise this is the best time of the year to make the journey. So very soon Hong Kong will be the unwilling host to fifty thousand Vietnamese. All searching for a new life which the colony is equally determined won't be there.
Boat people who arrived before June 1988 were given refugee status. It didn't matter whether they came from the North or the South or what their motives were. These are the people now living in the old refugee camps. There, conditions are unpleasant enough: empty halls filled with metal shelving units, which shelve the people into four layers, which in turn are divided into wall-less cubicles, six feet by four, where the refugees make their homes. Here they cook,
SLOW BOAT TO CHINA
by Linda McDougall
eat, sleep, make love, and bring up their children. Some have been here for
years. No one complains because they know that eventually they will go to Australia, Canada, the US. Or even, last and most unwelcoming, Britain, for resettlement.
In June 1988 the rules were changed. Just making the journey was not evidence enough. All the boat people who have arrived since then have to be interviewed and assessed as refugees or illegal immigrants, a metaphysical distinction, reached by crude, but slow, procedures. Perhaps one person in twenty satisfies the authorities that they are a bona fide refugee: someone come to escape persecution, or suspect because they supported or fought the old regime. As distinct from merely a part of that remorseless tide of humanity swirling round the world to improve its lot. The successful ones get refugee status and a place on the lengthening waiting list, moving hopefully down the line into the Sham Shui detention
centre.
There three thousand eight hundred people are crammed into one aircraft hangar: the population of a village all herded into the village hall. There is nothing for anyone to do. Aid organisations, such as Save the Children, are at their wits end. They set up schools and self help groups, but all were disbanded. The space was needed to cram in
more boat people.
A trip round the hangar is a depressing experience. An air of listlessness hangs over everything. And everyone. Young mothers lie on the floor of their allocated space staring into the distance and dreaming. Young men huddle in tight groups, smoke and plot. Unlike young men everywhere else they have one certainty: they're going nowhere.
Yet life on the shelf, in a camp or detention centre, is almost luxurious, compared to the treatment given to the latest arrivals. As they come in the boat people are picked up by the Marine Division of the Royal Hong Kong police. The policemen speak no Vietnamese, so they hand a printed sheet to each passenger giving them the good news that they have reached Hong Kong, and the bad news, that the place is full. It is suggested that if they would like to move on, out of Hong Kong waters, their boat can be mended, and they can be given food for the journey. Not surprisingly none avail themselves of this option.
The police then don surgical face masks and long sinister black gloves, and board the boat. The passengers are taken off to wait on the police launch, while the tubs and rust buckets (often near sinking at this stage) are searched for drugs, or gold. It's rare for anything to be found. Clutching their Dick Whittington bundles the boat people are
The House Magazine, JULY 17, 1989
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