ENG-1979 — Page 30

THE BOAT REFUGEES FROM VIETNAM

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blame people in Hong Kong for drawing the conclusion that help would be greater if policies were harsher. Nor can you blame those who apply harsher policies for concluding that they have paid off."

In broad terms, the Geneva conference achieved two things. As a result of the pledges made by countries taking part, it provided about 260,000 resettlement places for refugees in Southeast Asian camps (compared with only 130,000 places available before the meeting), together with adequate funds for the UNHCR to administer the resettlement programme. Secondly, it gave rise to an undertaking by the Vietnam Government that 'for a reasonable period of time' it would make every effort to stop 'illegal departures'.

Among the most notable pledges of resettlement places was the United States' decision to accept 14,000 refugees a month from countries throughout the region. The United Kingdom agreed to take an additional 10,000 refugees, all of them from Hong Kong. Canada promised to accept 50,000 by the end of 1980, and the Federal Republic of Germany set itself a new target of 10,000 (a figure which it more than doubled when it revised its objective later in the year).

On his return to Hong Kong on July 23, the Governor spelled out some of the main implications for Hong Kong at an airport news briefing. He described the results of the Geneva conference as a 'major achievement by the civilised world'. The time-table for having refugees resettled from Hong Kong would have to be worked out in further talks with the host countries, he said, but he hoped that by October about 7,000 people would have left and that a monthly departure rate of 4,000 would be established.

Sir Murray agreed that he returned to the territory far happier about the situation than when he departed for Geneva. But Hong Kong's hopes, he stressed, had to be blended with caution. In the first place, the resettlement pledges had to be converted into actual movements: Hong Kong was bent on getting a 'fair deal' out of the pledges, but the dis- cussions with host countries on implementing the programme of departures would take time. In addition, it had to be recognised that while arrivals from Vietnam had indeed dropped dramatically - from a rate of 500 a day in early July to something like a score a day by the time the conference opened -- the situation could once more become desperate if the Vietnam Government decided to 'turn the tap on again'.

Both the hopes and the warnings turned out to be justified. When the Geneva conference opened the tally was 66,038; two months later, on September 21, it was slightly higher – at 66,708. What happened in those two months was that while refugees were departing at a rate of about 100 a day, about 100 a day were still coming in; in fact the highest number of refugees in Hong Kong, 68,695, was recorded on September 11. It was only in the last week of September and in October that departures began noticeably to exceed arrivals and the total number of people in the camps began to fall. On October 31, the figure was 62,809.

The month of October also saw a resurgence of the influx of illegal immigrants from China - a problem which had subsided in July following action taken by the authorities on both sides of the border. In fact, this pressure of thousands of people trying to get into Hong Kong across the land border or by sea persisted - though at varying levels - through- out the year, exacerbating the nagging anxieties caused by the inflow of boat refugees.

The pressure of illegal immigration from China mounted throughout October. In this one month, Hong Kong's security forces detained and repatriated a total of 11,350 people, many of whom were identified as having made previous attempts to enter the territory illegally. It was impossible to know how many others evaded capture and made their way undetected to the urban areas: one estimate at this time was that for every 10 people caught,

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