Hong Kong Repatriates 38 Vietnam Boat People

Thirty-eight Vietnamese boat people were repatriated to their Communist homeland Friday under a new accord with Vietnam allowing Hong Kong to clear its crowded refugee camps.

Five of the deportees had to be dragged aboard the transport plane that carried the boat people back to Hanoi.

Twenty-five of the deportees had volunteered for repatriation, including eight who were serving jail terms for crimes committed in Hong Kong.

Clinton Leeks, Hong Kong’s refugee coordinator, said that the Vietnamese government has given its word that the returnees will not be mistreated, persecuted or discriminated against.

Reuters news agency reported from Hanoi that one of the returnees was arrested as soon as he stepped off the plane there. Diplomats said the man was wanted for alleged theft committed before he fled by boat to this British colony. Vietnam’s authorities had earlier told U.N. officials in Hong Kong that they intended to arrest the man, the diplomats were quoted by Reuters as saying.

The deportation of Vietnamese deemed not to be authentic political refugees is being resumed under an agreement initially made between Britain and Vietnam last Oct. 29 and updated May 12.

The agreement sanctions the forcible repatriation of boat people who may be economic migrants but do not qualify as political refugees, as well as so-called “double-backers”--people who returned to Vietnam voluntarily, then traveled to Hong Kong a second time.

Leeks said the accord has encouraged the Vietnamese to return home voluntarily under an incentive program of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees that provides returnees with $50 when they leave here and another $360 to help them during their first year back in Vietnam.

He added that among 92 Vietnamese transferred from Hong Kong’s Nei Kwu Chau camp to Green Island camp late last month for repatriation beginning Friday, about 80% volunteered to return home under the U.N. program.

“These people have been sitting in Nei Kwu Chau camp for two years, adamantly refusing to volunteer,” Leeks said. “But once you have an orderly, non-voluntary scheme, people look at the options and think if they have to go home, which way do they want to do it? The answer most of them give is they want to go home as volunteers.”

A total of 54,206 Vietnamese are currently in Hong Kong camps. Of that number, 3,527 have been classified as political refugees, entitled to resettlement in the West. More than 23,000 have been designated as economic migrants not entitled to refugee status.