Storm Aroused By Deportation

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29800, 17 April 1962, Page 15

Storm Aroused By Deportation

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) CANBERRA, April 16. The Australian Government has secretly deported a 34-year-old Chinese market gardener from Sydney to China and aroused fears that Australia’s image in Asia will suffer thereby.

The man, Willie Wong, passed across the Hong Kong border into China on Thursday. A cable from Canberra instructing authorities in Hong Kong to delay him arrived too late. Wong, an illegal immigrant, had been in Australia since 1954, when he arrived as a stowaway after escaping from China. The Immigration Department secretly deported him in the Anshun, which left Sydney on March 24 for Hong Kong. The cable to Hong Kong came after pleas by Sir Wilfrid Ken Hughes and Mr William Wentworth —both Liberals—to the Immigration Minister (Mr Downer) to stop Wong from being handed over to Chinese authorities. Wong had not suggested that he be deported to any country other than China, the Minister for Immigration said yesterday. Mr Downer said there was no evidence that Wong escaped from China. Wong had stated that he left his country to seek employment in Hong Kong and after two weeks stowed away in a ship for Australia. Mr Downer said he had directed the Immigration Department to discuss with the Nationalist Chinese Ambassador in Australia (Dr. Chen) whether future Chinese deportees might be sent to Formosa if they wished. Dr Chen said to reporters that Formosa would accept without conditions any Chinese deported from Australia Dr. Chen said that in the two years and a half he had been in Australia, he had not been asked to grant permission for any Chinese to be admitted to Formosa. Australia had perpetrated an ‘‘outrageous human error" which would be noted from one end of uncommitted Asia

to the other, said the Rev. B. G. Judd, secretary of the New South Wales Council of Churches today. The "Sydney Morning Herald” said editorially that the damaging impression had been left, especially on Asian minds, that Wong suffered for the colour of his skin, “and that had he been a European from a European Communist country he would not have been compelled to return to it.” Wong’s lawyer, Mr W. J. Lee. said the deported market gardener, who had lived in Australia since 1954, probably had no clue he was being sent back to China when he left Australia. He said at no stage had Wong expressed to him an unwillingness to return to the Chinese mainland, but this was because neither he nor Wong anticipated that Chinese deportees would have to go beyond Hong Kong. Mr David Wang, a recentlynaturalised Chinese businessman, said in Melbourne that if Australia had a quota system for Asian immigrants there would be no need for Chinese to risk their lives by coming in illegally. At present, there was no oilier way for Chinese to come to Australia apart from a limited stay on a permit as a tourist, businessman or student.