Hong Kong Moves 350 Refugees to Island : Boat People Have Food, No Shelter; No Funds Left, Official Says

Hong Kong, saying its resources for housing Vietnamese boat people have been overwhelmed, today moved 350 men, women and children to an island with only basic rations and no shelter.

The Vietnamese, the latest of the 2,300 boat people who have arrived in the British colony over the last three days, were taken by police launch and left under guard on Tai A Chau, the main island in the Soko group.

“They will be provided with food and water, but we are not able to provide them with shelter,” said government refugee coordinator Mike Hanson.

“We simply have no accommodation left. I think it is important that people in the camps and in the northern part of Vietnam understand that we have no accommodation for boat people,” Hanson said.

Hanson added that any new arrivals will be towed out to the Sokos if their boats are seaworthy but will have the option of continuing their voyage if they wish.

The Sokos, among Hong Kong’s 236 islands, are inhabited by only one elderly Chinese couple. There is no running water and there are no facilities except for a run-down former school.

There are now nearly 38,000 Vietnamese boat people jammed into Hong Kong’s camps, prisons and detention centers.

About 24,000 of them, who arrived after the British colony introduced a tough new screening policy last year, are regarded as illegal immigrants.

They are being held pending repatriation unless they can prove that they are genuine refugees under U.N. criteria and not just economic migrants.