Offer to stranded refugees

Press, 18 January 1979, Page 6

Offer to stranded refugees

[NZPA-Reuter Hong Kong ' Hong Kong has offered 'temporary asylum to 300 (Vietnamese aboard the [freighter Huey Fong — but I they must first sail to Taiwan with the 2400 ethnic [Chinese from Vietnam who iare also aboard the rusty old I ship, a Government spokesman has said.

The Hong Kong Government had offered to send an escort of two naval ships equipped with 3000 lifejackets, alongside the Huey Fong “as far as Taiwan waters,” he added.

The spokesman was revealing details of a letter sent to the refugees last Saturday by the Hong Kong Secretary for Security (Mr| Lewis Davies) which reiterated the Government’s determination to bar entry because this was not the ship’s first port of call. The spokesman said the refugees were told “if you all go to Taiwan, we will allow the 300 ethnic Vietnamese aboard to come back here and be resettled from Hong Kong.”

“This was to allay fears that they wouldn’t be allowed to land in Taiwan where the refugees thought that only ethnic Chinese would be allowed in,” he added.

A refugee spokesman, talking on the ship’s radio telephone, said: “Morale is very low because of weak health conditions and the cold weather. As it’s very wet, we have been unable to get any sleep."

The red-and-black funnelled freighter, its decks covered with tarpaulin sheltering the huddled refugees, has now been lying off the tiny Hong Kong island of Po Toi for 26 days. At first the refugees threatened mass suicide if the ship sailed on. But then they set up special vigilante groups who patrolled the decks on the look-out for would-be suicides threatening to jump overboard. Two women from the ship have given birth