ENG-1962 — Page 260

LAW, ORDER AND RECORDS

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centre at Fanling was closed. Although a very large number of immigrants had been intercepted, it was known that many had managed to evade the cordons and check-points and make their way into the urban area. It is now estimated that nearly 60,000 persons succeeded in entering the Colony illegally during May.

The situation on the border attracted world-wide publicity and although, on the whole, international comment was favourable -the patience and restraint of the police and military being especially commended-there was considerable public sympathy for the immigrants in western countries. Government's policy in returning them to China (and the reasons for it) were not always fully understood at the time and came in for criticism. In fact, the events of May were merely a rather more spectacular phase in the Colony's continuing struggle against uncontrolled immigra- tion-immigration motivated principally by economic and not poli- tical pressures.

Meanwhile, although illegal entry across the land frontier had virtually ceased by June, the number of persons entering cland- estinely by sea, both direct from China and via Macau, showed substantial increases, and in August the Governor authorized a special combined operation by units of the police and the revenue service, assisted by the armed services, under the command of an assistant commissioner of police. The unit has control of a large number of launches for continuous seaward patrols, and as a result of these and other measures the scale of illegal immigration has undoubtedly been checked significantly. Confidence in the cland- estine organizations dealing with the traffic from Macau was shaken by incidents in which illegal immigrants were landed on uninhabited islands, without food or water, under the impression that they had reached Hong Kong safely. Much public indignation was aroused in November when it became known that a large number of potential immigrants, being landed from a junk at Chai Wan, had been drowned when their craft capsized in rough seas. Thirty bodies were subsequently recovered. Government increased the penalties which can be imposed on aiders and abettors of illegal immigration to a maximum fine of $2,000 and imprisonment for three years. All vessels engaged in this traffic for which the courts make confiscation orders are destroyed to prevent their return to the trade.