Hong Kong Expulsions of ‘Boat People’ Halted : Refugees: Britain says no more Vietnamese will be deported for a week. Parliament will debate the issue.

Britain announced Tuesday that there will be no more deportations of Vietnamese “boat people” from Hong Kong before the House of Commons holds a full-scale debate on the issue next Tuesday.

The pledge followed fierce criticism here and abroad over the expulsion of 51 Vietnamese men, women and children who were removed from a Hong Kong detention center before dawn and flown back to Hanoi under police guard.

While Britain’s announcement was widely interpreted as a retreat, however, a spokesman for the Foreign Office insisted that no further expulsions had been planned before next Tuesday, anyway. “You can take it that there was no plan,” he said.

The spokesman refused to give any further details but said there has been no change in this country’s commitment to the repatriation of those “boat people” not considered true political refugees.

About 56,000 Vietnamese “boat people” are being held in overcrowded camps in Hong Kong, a British colony which is scheduled to be turned over to Chinese rule in 1997. Only 12,219 of those have been declared genuine refugees and eligible for resettlement in the West. Officials here contend that the great majority are economic migrants, seeking only to improve their standard of living.

In Washington, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said publicly what British sources say President Bush had told Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher privately at Camp David last month--that the United States considers forced repatriation “unacceptable until conditions improve in Vietnam.”

Thatcher and Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, meanwhile, defended Britain’s actions during some of the angriest and rowdiest Commons exchanges in months.

Labor Parliament members derided the $30 per adult and $15 per child handed to the 51 deportees as “blood money.”

Opposition leader Neil Kinnock charged that the prime minister had behaved “tyrannically” in ordering the “shameful” expulsions and that she is now trying “to defend the indefensible.”

But Thatcher termed Kinnock’s remarks “feeble and nonsense,” and insisted that “it is perfectly in order to return illegal immigrants to their country of origin. Otherwise there would be international chaos.”

She added that those countries protesting Britain’s action “would do far better” to take in some of the “boat people” themselves.

Hurd said that unless something is done, “Hong Kong faces the prospect of tens of thousands more arrivals in 1990. This is simply not an acceptable prospect,” he added.

The foreign secretary said that “no force was used” against the 51 people sent back to Vietnam on Tuesday morning and that the operation was conducted “in line with procedures used worldwide to remove people refused permission to remain in a territory.”

Hurd added that “this has been (done) to show people who might plan to come to Hong Kong that it is not a happy voyage and will not lead to resettlement in the West.”

U.N. refugee officials dissociated themselves from what one termed the “clandestine” deportations.

Robert Van Leeuwen, chief of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Hong Kong, told reporters there that “given the demonstrated potential of voluntary repatriation, mandatory repatriation must be considered premature.”

All arriving Vietnamese “boat people” have been screened since June 16, 1988, to determine whether they qualify as genuine refugees, and the authorities have urged those “screened out” to accept voluntary repatriation. About 600 have been returned to Vietnam under the voluntary scheme so far, and another 1,000 are said to be awaiting transportation home.

However, Hurd argued, during the time that those 600 volunteers went back, 30,000 more “boat people” arrived. “It is clear that voluntary returns alone will not match the scale of the problem,” he said.

The voluntary program is monitored and paid for by the U.N. refugee agency. The Hong Kong government said Tuesday that it is splitting the costs of mandatory repatriation, about $620 per person to the Vietnamese government, with the British government.

David Wilson, the British governor of Hong Kong, told reporters there Tuesday that the decision to proceed with mandatory repatriation was made after “a great deal of heart searching.”

He said the Vietnamese authorities, in negotiations with British and Hong Kong officials, gave assurances that the returned refugees “won’t be punished, that they will be treated properly, and it will be possible to monitor what is happening to them.”

“The reality,” he went on, “is that the places these people want to go to don’t want to accept them as refugees. It is far better that these people should go back with a carefully monitored program.”

A statement issued Tuesday in Hong Kong said that monitoring of the returnees will be left initially to the British Embassy in Hanoi, but it expressed hope that an independent organization will come forward to take over the process.

The 51 “boat people” who were returned “looked tired and depressed,” witnesses said, as Vietnamese officials at Hanoi’s Noi Bai Airport whisked them off a chartered Cathay Pacific aircraft to a reception center in a walled compound with guards at the gate.

An airport official said the returnees went through “the usual passport and customs procedures” and then boarded buses to Soc San reception center about six miles north of the airport. Vietnamese authorities turned down requests by journalists to visit the center.

Francis Maude, the British official responsible for Hong Kong affairs, said that he was convinced there were no political refugees among the 51 people sent back Tuesday. All had been segregated for about a month in the Phoenix House detention center near Hong Kong’s airport.

“The fact is that what we undertook last night is no different from the process which the Americans take day by day in respect of people seeking to enter America illegally from Mexico, Haiti and a number of other places,” Maude said later in a television interview.

While there had been fear that the first involuntary repatriations might touch off rioting or suicides among other “boat people,” Hong Kong government officials said the camps there were calm Tuesday. The press was barred from the camps and prevented from talking with the refugees.

Jamie Clements, commander of the Shek Kong camp, where 7,147 Vietnamese are waiting to be screened, said the mood in the camp was one of “inertia--they are showing no particular interest.”

At Whitehead, a large camp in the outlying New Territories, all appeared calm.

In Hong Kong, the decision was widely praised by local officials who said they could see no alternative to sending the “boat people” back to Vietnam.

“It was the only logical option open to us before we face another influx next year,” said Ho Yin Fat, a local government official who has led the campaign to send the Vietnamese home.

But Adrie P. Van Gelderen, refugee coordinator for International Social Services, a private relief agency, said the expulsions were “an act of cowardice rather than courage.” He said the government prevented any private organization from monitoring the removals of the refugees to the airport.

Fisher reported from London and Wallace from Hong Kong.