ENG-1991 — Page 430

POPULATION AND IMMIGRATION

During the year, 158 recruits completed their induction training. A further 2 190 serving officers received various types of job-related, management, development and other aspects of continuation training, including 19 officers selected for overseas attachment and training in the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, France, Australia, Malaysia and Japan.

Vietnamese Illegal Immigrants

The year was a difficult one for Hong Kong in dealing with the Vietnamese illegal immigrant problem. During 1991, 20 200 Vietnamese illegal immigrants arrived, nearly three times the number that arrived in Hong Kong in 1990.

The huge influx of new arrivals posed major accommodation problems. It also created heavy community pressure for an end to the policy of first asylum. The government considered this option very carefully but continued to believe that ending first asylum would be neither an effective nor a practicable solution to this difficult problem. But the pressure on accommodation for new arrivals, and the continuing failure of the inter- national community to find a proper solution to this 16-year-old problem, brought the possibility of first asylum ending in Hong Kong nearer during the course of 1991.

The government believes that the Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA), agreed internationally by some 75 countries at the Geneva Conference in June 1989, remains the right approach to solve the Vietnamese illegal immigrant issue. It has been the failure to implement the CPA in full which has so far prevented a humane resolution of the problem. Under the CPA, Vietnamese illegal immigrants who satisfy the requirements for determining refugee status in the 1951 UN Convention and 1967 Protocol are made available for resettlement whereas those who do not meet these criteria should be returned to Vietnam once arrangements have been made for them to do so in safety and dignity. Over the past few years, arrivals in Hong Kong have far exceeded the rate of departures from the territory. Both the United Kingdom and the Hong Kong Governments have made clear to the international community that Hong Kong could not continue to bear the full weight of the CPA indefinitely and that steps would need to be taken as soon as possible to facilitate the return of Vietnamese non-refugees to their own country. The United Kingdom and Hong Kong Governments therefore held detailed discussions with the Vietnamese Government in the autumn to try to secure new arrangements to implement in full the CPA provision that Vietnamese illegal immigrants must return home. There were encouraging signs of greater Vietnamese willingness to accept responsibility for all its citizens who left Vietnam clandestinely and were found not to be genuine refugees on arrival in places of first asylum. On this basis, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong Governments explored with Vietnam the details of establishing an orderly repatriation programme for returning to Vietnam all the illegal immigrants in camps in Hong Kong, including those who, having returned once to Vietnam, come back to Hong Kong a second time. In exploring such arrangements, the Hong Kong Government recognised the importance of the guarantees the Vietnamese Government has publicly given that none who return will face persecution and the fact that United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) would monitor the treatment of all returnees. The Hong Kong Government also reiterated that it would not consider returning anyone whom the government or the UNHCR considered to be a genuine refugee under the normal international rules. The government stressed that it would wish to encourage as many

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