150 Protest Repatriation of Vietnamese : Refugees: L.A. British Consulate is scene of rally against agreement that has allowed forced return of boat people from Hong Kong camps.

About 150 protesters demonstrated Tuesday against the forced repatriation of Vietnamese refugees from Hong Kong during a rally outside the British Consulate General.

The demonstrators carried signs, chanted and marched in front of the bank that houses the consulate on Wilshire Boulevard for two hours before 10 of them were allowed inside to meet with an embassy official to protest the agreement between the British and Vietnamese governments. Under the Oct. 29 agreement, Vietnamese refugees are being returned to their homeland if United Nations refugee officials rule the refugee left for economic reasons rather than a fear of persecution.

“I’ll be frank with you,” Cong Minh Tran told Angus Mackay, vice consul for public affairs. “We’re very upset. We have always respected the United Kingdom as a country that fights for freedom and human rights. This act is not worthy of such a nation.”

Officials believe about 50,000 of the 60,000 Vietnamese boat people in Hong Kong will be forcibly returned to Vietnam under guidelines provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The agency defines a refugee as someone who “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion” has fled his homeland.

Activists say the screening process at refugee camps is unfair because Hong Kong is determined to send everyone back.

“We who came here first cannot forget our responsibility to those who only recently are escaping from Vietnam,” said Sang Quy Do, chairman of the Unified Vietnamese Community Council. “The entire society in Vietnam is one big jail and that’s why all of us who leave are political refugees.”

Organizers of the protest said that more than half of the demonstrators were from Orange County. They carried signs declaring: “Refugee Screening Is A Lie” and “We Have Traded Our Lives For Freedom,” while chanting “We want human rights!” and waving to passing motorists, many of whom honked in support.

Among the demonstrators was Tu-Uyen Nguyen, a sophomore at UC Irvine, who said she visited refugee camps in Hong Kong, Malaysia and the Philippines last summer as part of an international group observing the screening process.

“There was a man who had been in re-education camps for six years and he was screened out (as an economic refugee),” Nguyen said. “That was a clear case of political persecution. . . . And there are hundreds of cases like his.”

Hanoi has promised not to persecute or harm the returnees, but activists insist that job discrimination and imprisonment await them.

Though Vietnam has agreed to waive some prosecutions, Vietnamese community leaders say, returnees face up to two years imprisonment for illegal emigration and up to 12 years for fleeing with the intent to oppose the government.

Mackay said the United Nations agency will be monitoring the situation in Vietnam. However, Vietnamese community leaders said these representatives will see only what is staged for them.

The first forced repatriation of 59 refugees took place Saturday and gripping pictures of it were broadcast around the world. Officials expect more repatriations in the next month.

The first group all were so-called “double-backers,” who had returned once to Vietnam voluntarily then gone to Hong Kong a second time. U.N. officials accused them of taking advantage of an incentive plan offered by the U.N., which paid volunteer returnees an allowance of up to $360.