Hong Kong Handling of ‘Boat People’ Draws Fire

As Western and Southeast Asian nations met Tuesday in Geneva to consider changes in their policy toward Vietnamese “boat people,” Hong Kong authorities were coming under increasing fire for the way they determine whether Vietnamese qualify for refugee status.

The Steering Committee of the International Conference on Indochinese Refugees opened a two-day meeting in Switzerland on Tuesday amid increasing concern that a number of countries in Southeast Asia are edging nearer to the point where they will no longer accept Vietnamese for consideration as refugees.

With more than 43,000 people in detention centers in Hong Kong, the British want to begin large-scale repatriation of Vietnamese who are screened out or rejected as refugees. Last December, 51 such Vietnamese were sent back to Vietnam, provoking widespread condemnation of British policy.

Now, the British hope there will be an international consensus for mandatory repatriation of non-refugees, with London willing to postpone further shipments of refugees back to Vietnam for up to six months to permit a voluntary return program more time to prove its effectiveness, as Washington had demanded.

Hong Kong was first in Asia to begin screening boat people, announcing in July, 1988, that it would separate so-called economic migrants from the genuine refugees.

Hong Kong has screened 8,492 of the 43,696 people who arrived since the July, 1988, cutoff. Of those, only 925 have been accepted under the U.N. conventions that define a refugee as one with a well-defined fear of persecution on political, social or religious grounds.

The 925 have been sent to refugee camps for eventual resettlement in the West. The remainder are being held in detention centers for eventual repatriation.

But in the last month, Amnesty International, the London-based human rights group, has described the screening process as “critically flawed,” and a group of U.S.- and Hong Kong-based human rights lawyers has assembled a legal team to challenge its fairness in the Hong Kong courts.

“These people have not been accorded what you in the United States would call procedural due process,” said David Clark, a lecturer at the University of Hong Kong and spokesman for the group of lawyers here.

Hong Kong authorities have rejected the criticism. Geoffrey Barnes, the secretary for security, said that “in operating the screening and appeals procedure, the benefit of the doubt was given to Vietnamese claiming refugee status, with the result that there are probably a great many more successful claims than would be warranted by a strict application of (U.N.) criteria.”

Each applicant for refugee status has an interview that lasts from two hours to two days, according to Carrie Yau, the principal assistant secretary for security.

Rejected applicants can file for a review of the decision. A team of 11 lawyers is available to help prepare the review cases, and virtually all Vietnamese rejected at the first stage file for review.

After two rejections, the U.N. agency can exercise a “right of mandate” and designate persons as refugees. Hong Kong has agreed to accept this procedure, and the mandate has been used in 65 cases.