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The experience of Hong ~ b n ~ in working with Indochinese asylum seekers may be divided into three periods: i) May 4, 1975 the date on which the container ship, Clara Maersk, arrived in the harbour with 3,743 refugees rescued in the South China Sea until July 2, 1982, when the closed camp policy was introduced; ii) the six years of the closed camp era in which, at least initially, there was a steady flow of refugees leaving for resettlement countries; and iii) the period from June 16, 1988 the date on which the screening and repatriation policy came into operation -until the present. Hong Kong responded magnificently during the early years. The highest number of refugees in the territory, 68,695, was recorded on September 11, 1979. Even during the six years of closed camps, the problems were minimal. People arrived, they were "processed" and most were able to move on. Unfortunately, as is well known, the offers of resettlement became fewer and fewer during the first months of 1988. The closed camp policy in 1982 was perceived as "the" deterrent. It failed. Asylum seekers continued to arrive in large numbers. Established as a result of the whipping up of public indignation by what appears to have been a small group of prominent community leaders recently very quiet about the issue the screening and repatriation measures introduced in June 1988 were presented as the "ultimate deterrent." Clearly, those measures, too, have failed. Nearly 40,000 Vietnamese people have subsequently arrived in the temtory. The screening and repatriation policy was doomed from the start, accompanied as it was by an apparent lack of foresight: few interviewers ready to engage in the screening process, a chronic shortage of Corredional Services Department (Prison) staff, few identifiable plans for the housing of thousands of new arrivals, and little insight into the need for "quality communication" between people in distressing circumstances and those charged with their control and supervision, especially in respect of the potential for violence in any group of people living in deplorable conditions from whom all hope has been removed. Placing people in detention centres under intolerable conditions surrounded by mud and filth with poor medical facilities and an inadequate diet inevitably led to increasing levels of aggression among the Vietnamese, between different groups in the camps and in their dealings with the police and custodial services. Throughout 1989, the hostility of the local Hong Kong Chinese also mounted: towards the daily boatloads of asylum seekers, and to the way in which camps were set up in their midst. The policy of repatriation was based on the strangest assumption, namely by a little relabelling and redirection in Hong Kong, the Vietnamese would become^ "good people" and remain in their own country, or voluntarily return to their country of origin. The voluntary repatriation scheme has made no significant impact on the overall numbers of Vietnamese in Hong Kong. Only a few hundred people have elected to return on a voluntary basis. There are now more that 50,000 Qetnamese in the territory for whom the Hong Kong government has no immediate solution, except to push ahead with mandatory repatriation. The fact that asylum seekers are extremely resistant to such a step; that the Vietnamese government has made no firm commitment to accepting them; that any people forcibly returned to Vietnam will bring forth international condemnation; and that, in practical terms, there is no way to transport people against their will without the use of violence, are issues that the Hong Kong government has yet to address. For the Vietnamese, many must liken their present plight to still being caught up in a kind of war. Victory means their only chance to establish some sort of a future for themselves and their families. Defeat may mean being returned to a life of degradation, poverty and oppression. We must remember that it was war that provided the backdrop to the present misery of the Vietnamese people. The extensive use of napalm by US forces maimed and killed many hundreds of thousands of avilians, and the employment of defoliants to destroy heavy ground cover devastated the ecology of an essentially agricultural Country. As Melanie Beresford says in he book Vietnam (London: Pinter, 19881, it was misguided American prestige and their need to defend the "free world" that brought so much misery, and eventually their retreat from Vietnam. She concludes: "But this did not occur before [the US1 had become embroiled to an extent unprecedented in its history or before it had wreaked such havoc on Vietnam that it would take years to mver." Given such a background, who, with perhaps life itself at stake, would submit meekly to the "arrangements" being made for forced repatriation?

Mandatory Repatriation Is Not the Answer to Hong Kong's Problem