TNAG-2062-FCO40-2940-Vietnamese-boat-people-repatriation-1990 — Page 36

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5. Lord Ennals and Mr Raison took great time and care over each of the interviews. I share their conviction that the presence of officials (including the one from the Foreign Relations Bureau, who appeared to make one or two notes) at the first interview did not

affect its course or the information gathered from the returnees.

The same accusation of compromising the first interview could have been made of the press. Although they were not present during the

interview itself, they invaded the small family room beforehand for a photo call and generated a great deal of excitment and curiosity among neighbours.

6. It would not be far-fetched to speak of a press circus accompanying us on our first day in Haiphong on 8 January, including

TV cameras. The sight of two Embassy Land Cruisers and a convoy of half a dozen new Toyota cars cruising the back streets of Haiphong

and disgorging a herd of reporters and their paraphernalia was quite extraordinary. With the exception of the Daily Mail correspondent, who had clearly come with the intention of criticising the mission,

the other journalists seemed prepared to give Lord Ennals and Mr

Raison a fair chance, although their questions were searching and inclined to be sceptical. But it is clear from today's fairly

minimal reporting of the publication of the report that, for the

media, the real story was the course of the mission and not its

outcome, which last week's reporting had by and large already

anticipated.

7.

I went to Vietnam sceptical of the by now familiar complaints of

the returnees lack of information about screening and the

volunteer programme, the confusion over payment of US$50/30 or

US$30/15, demands to see UNHCR and Vietnamese representatives at Hong Kong Airport etc. But, having witnessed the interviews and the

returnees, I cannot help concluding that there may be some substance

to them. There was no sign that the returnees had colluded or been

coached in their stories (indeed, because they had been out of

Haiphong, the subjects of the third interview did not know Lord

Ennals and Mr Raison would be calling on them). All the returnees

were unsophisticated, uneducated people who seemed genuinely to have

only the haziest ideas about what procedures they had been through

and what they had been told. I do not doubt the sincerity and truth

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