Description
Beginning in the mid-1970s, an influx of Vietnamese boat people disturbed Hong Kong’s law and order and economy for 25 years. The refugee camps and boat people camps witnessed internal strife between northern and southern Vietnamese refugees. Plenty of weapons were found in the camps by the Hong Kong Police Force from time to time.
The Vietnam War, which broke out in 1961, ended in 1975 with the retreat of the US forces with heavy casualties and the surrender of the South Vietnamese Government to the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong guerrillas. Fear of the new regime caused many South Vietnamese to flee. North Vietnamese also flocked to Hong Kong in the belief that the refugees would have the opportunity to emigrate to Western countries if they arrived in Hong Kong.
In 1979, the British Government signed an international convention, making Hong Kong a “Port of First Asylum”. Following the arrival of the first batch of Vietnamese refugees in 1975, Hong Kong was ordered to accept over 200,000 Vietnamese. From 1988, the Hong Kong Government implemented a screening policy, classifying Vietnamese entering Hong Kong into “political refugees” and “boat people”. Boat people, who entered Hong Kong for economic reasons, were considered illegal immigrants and were not sent to a third country but repatriated to Vietnam. At the time, this policy was broadcast in the Vietnamese language through Radio Television Hong Kong. It became widely known to Hong Kong people as the “bắt đầu từ nay’—the phrase contains the first four syllables of the Vietnamese language broadcast meaning “from now on”.
For various reasons, the atmosphere in the refugee camps was tense and unsettling at the time. Occasional clashes between boat people from the north and south broke out, with many of the boat people possessing homemade weapons for self-defence or attack. The Force often discovered large quantities of weapons in refugee camps. There were major disturbances at the Shek Kong Detention Centre and the Whitehead Detention Centre in February 1992 and April 1994 respectively.
Hong Kong closed its last refugee camp in 2000. More than 143,000 of the Vietnamese refugees who fled to Hong Kong were accepted by overseas countries. Over 70,000 were repatriated to Vietnam. By 2000, Hong Kong had taken in over 200,000 Vietnamese refugees and boat people, at a huge cost. The United Nations Refugee Agency owed Hong Kong over HK$1.1 billion in refugee-related debt. In the 30 years to the end of 2005, more than 1,000 refugees or boat people were allowed to stay in Hong Kong.
