ENG-1995 — Page 476

POPULATION AND IMMIGRATION

During the year, 290 new recruits completed induction training and 2 482 serving officers received various types of job-related and management training. Of these, 14 were sent for overseas attachment and training.

Vietnamese Migrants

The Vietnamese migrant population in Hong Kong camps continued to decline in 1995. During the year, only 460 Vietnamese migrants arrived in Hong Kong and 3 186 were either settled overseas or repatriated to Vietnam. The corresponding figures for 1994 were 363 and 7 443.

The Hong Kong Government's policy towards Vietnamese migrants is based on the Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA), which was endorsed by the international community at the Geneva Conference held in June 1989. The CPA provides that while those Vietnamese migrants who are classified as refugees under the terms of the 1951 United Nations Convention and 1967 Protocol are eligible for resettlement, those who are found not to be refugees should return to Vietnam.

Screening of Vietnamese migrants was effectively completed in October 1994. Resettlement of the refugees continued, mainly to Canada, Australia and the United States, and 548 refugees were resettled overseas during the year.

The voluntary return programme operated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is the preferred means of repatriating those who have been determined not to be refugees. Since its inception, 45 838 Vietnamese have returned to Vietnam under this programme. In October 1991, agreement was reached with the Vietnamese Government on the orderly repatriation of all Vietnamese migrants found to be non-refugees. A total of 1 775 persons have since been returned to Vietnam under this programme.

In March 1995, the Sixth Steering Committee of the International Conference on Indo-Chinese Refugees met in Geneva and set the end of 1995 as the target date for the return of all non-refugees to Vietnam for other asylum countries. For Hong Kong, which holds about half of the Vietnamese population in the region, the target was set for shortly after the end of 1995. It was also agreed at that meeting that simplified procedures should be adopted for the return of the Vietnamese migrants.

The pace of the voluntary repatriation programme in 1995 was slower than in the previous year. In April, a special allowance of US$150 was introduced for those Vietnamese migrants who volunteered to return to Vietnam. Those migrants who had been cleared by the Vietnamese Government for return under the orderly repatriation programme were counselled to accept the financial incentive and leave voluntarily. This saw an increase in the number of volunteers. However, the voluntary repatriation programme encountered difficulties when, in May, legislative initiatives in the US Congress suggested that some migrants might have a chance of resettlement overseas. The US Administration subsequently made clear its support of the CPA but participation in the voluntary repatriation programme remained low. Only 1 673 persons returned to Vietnam voluntarily during the year, an average of 139 per month.

The pace of the orderly return programme was accelerated, with 864 Vietnamese migrants returned to Vietnam. Operations to remove the returnees for the programme were, however, met with escalating levels of resistance. Since September 1994, these

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