I: I thought before the Skyluck landed itself on Lama Island, the people on that boat were not allowed to land.

PL: They were not.

I: They were kept in a separate area.

PL: Correct. There was a bit of ‘argy bargy’ because there is a degree of suspicion of about what the Skyluck was up to. Why was it carrying 3000 refugees? And at the time, everything was uncertain. And there was the question as to whether or not Hong Kong was the proper place of destination. So they were not allowed to land amongst other things, hoping that they could be persuaded to go to another port, where they were supposed to land. Hong Kong was not the correct port of call. And therefore they were kept on the ships. But by whatever means, the Vietnamese got themselves on the land. It wasn’t as if they were being treated differently from the others. As soon as they landed, they were treated as any other. There was no different treatment. And of course there were other ships coming in at the time.

At the height of the small ships arrivals, we had something like 4000-5000 on boats, in the Western Quarantine area, waiting to be landed. If you have a choice, if you land them before their seven day quarantine period, you might run the risk of spreading plague in Hong Kong. If you don’t land them, you run the risk of the boat sinking and the refugees might drown. I think at the end, we took the decision that there is no choice. We had to land them, come what may. So we landed them in the dock, at the wharf. Very packed conditions. Because they were still within the quarantine period, we can’t allow them to be spread out to the refugee camps because otherwise there is always a risk that the plague will infect others. We kept them for the requisite time. We gave them medical care and food and so on until they were available to be transferred out.

I: So everybody was crammed on the dock and stayed there for quarantine?

PL: Some had to stay for a week, two weeks. Some had to stay anyway until we found space for them in the proper refugee camps. It was not ideal; it was certainly not a good place to stay. But you either pick between the devil and the deep blue sea. They are either floating in refugee boats in the harbour, but at least on land they are safe, they are under care, they are being watched by doctors and nurses for illnesses, they are being fed food by the normal standard scale of food in Hong Kong, they have toilet facilities. In their little boats they have nothing.

I: What happened to the boats once they were quarantined and on land?

PL: The boats are not seaworthy. They can hardly float. So they are mostly being sunk. You can’t use them anymore.

I: But it was still a task the Government, which is to remove the boats?

PL: We asked the Marine Department to remove them into the junkyard. But they are hardly even seaworthy. And that’s one reason why it was virtually impossible to do what some people in Hong Kong wants us to do, which was to tow them out to sea. They won’t survive that. As soon as you start towing, it will be sunk. So what do you do? You might as well not tow.

I: So, on top of looking for space to house people, you had to look for space for the boats too.

PL: But, not too bad. It’s not too bad. Boats, you can sink them, they go to the bottom. People, you have to accommodate in habitable environments and not too cramped. And make sure they have food, medical care and so on. Children have some form of education while they wait.

I: Food – how did you handle that?

PL: Initially, they are all provided food from our emergency kitchen. Throughout the 1940’s, 50’s or even 60’s, when Hong Kong was less developed than it was today, we have periodic typhoons coming. And victims when their houses in the hills are being torn down by heavy wind and rain. And natural disasters of all sorts. And one of the things we built up is we have a very, very large cooking facility called the Kowloon Kitchen run by the social welfare department. And all food was cooked there and provided in transportable packages with a barrel-full of rice, dishes, etc. All according to WHO dictative standard scale of nutrition. But of course, I mean, they are nutritious food but they are not always very tasty food. It’s because you have to deal with such large numbers.

And also because the food was cooked according to Hong Kong people’s style, which isn’t necessarily the same style the Vietnamese were used to. Eventually, we found that for some of them when they are properly housed in refugee camps, they rather preferred if we give them the ingredients, the uncooked rice instead of cooked rice, and we give them all the other ingredients, seasonings, chilli, vegetables, meat – they’d rather cook it themselves. So eventually, we ended up having cooking facilities within the camps as well. That way, they can cook for themselves whatever they liked for the day. And they can season it in whatever way that they are used to.

I: What about the cost of taking care of them? Food, accommodations, transportations, etc?

PL: The cost is agreed internationally under UNHCR auspices. I can’t remember, I think it was in late July ’79. We have to bear – the Hong Kong Government – had to bear all the costs. Afterwards, I think it was credited, for those who were detained, pending confirmation documentation and examination – for confirmation that they are Vietnamese refugees – while they are under detention, we paid for their cost of detention, their food, medicine etc. Once they are confirmed refugees and sent to live in refugee camps, the cost is incurred by the agency running the camp and UNHCR was supposed to be responsible for the cost of care and maintenance of all refugees.

In return, the Hong Kong Government undertook to accept all refugee arrivals and give them first point of asylum and treat them in the way that I described. This was until UNHCR finds resettlement places for them elsewhere. Sometimes because of the scale of the influx and the scale of the number or people, it probably takes quite a long time. In the meantime, once they are finally housed in refugee camps, it is of course the camp authorities which arrange for cost of their care and maintenance. And the cost in theory is borne by the UNHCR. But over the years of course, the Vietnamese boat people crisis has lasted, some 30 years as far as Hong Kong is concerned.

At some point in time, of course, the UNHCR has simply run out of money. So, we then entered into an agreement whereby UNHCR accepts that while we say we will pay for the cost of their care and maintenance initially, but the UNHCR will reimburse us when they have the money available. But even up til now, they didn’t have the money available and is still recorded in the Hong Kong Government as a debt owed by the UNHCR to Hong Kong.

I: Any chance of them repaying?

PL: You ask UNHCR about that. The UNHCR itself doesn’t have a lot of money. The cost of its programs worldwide is mostly funded through donations by countries. And if countries don’t donate, they don’t have money. In the late 70’s – early 80’s, there was a lot of international sympathy for the plight of the Vietnamese boat people. From especially western countries, there was funding earmarked for the Vietnamese refugee program. Don’t forget at the time there were a lot of refugee programs all over the world, particularly in America and later in Europe. But of course once this thing has dragged on for so long, people are fatigued, Vietnamese refugee fatigue, the money dried up. And money available in donor countries were earmarked for other refugees, for more urgent refugee situations where people are literally starving and unhoused and so on and so forth. You can understand why that happens. And there is no money. The UNHCR couldn’t reimburse anything. Because of humanitarian reasons we kept on doing [our work]. I think it’s certainly last I recall, almost $1 billion HKD owed by UNHCR.

I: How did the taxpayers in Hong Kong react to this?

PL: Pretty badly, I guess. Every year we get the accounts written up by the Commissioner for Audit and the Audit Report gives us help. And every year the Audit Report says we must chase up the UNHCR to pay. And the UNHCR says, ‘well we don’t have the funds, we can’t pay’. There are certain ethical standards that we do have to follow whatever the politics of that are. We can’t simply say, ‘ok if UNHCR doesn’t pay up, we won’t find food for you’. That’s not what we would be doing. Once of course after the screening policy is in place and once they’ve screened the refugees and transferred to open camps, they are allowed to work and earn a living just like everybody else in Hong Kong. And they earn their own keep.

So the cost for refugees is essentially not that high. Because a lot of them were self-supporting and the cost of care and maintenance per refugee is much lower. But Hong Kong Government was then left with the bill for those who were screened out as non-refugees, which as you know, there were tens of thousands of them arriving in the late 80’s and 90’s mostly, from North Vietnam, who were screened out under international regulations and standards as non-refugees. And they were held pending repatriation to Vietnam.

That bill was borne entirely by the Government. Because in the late 80’s and early 90’s, they were mostly from North Vietnam and screened out as refugees. That cost was pretty high, and of course makes the people of Hong Kong even angrier. The fact that Hong Kong had to shoulder the bill. When this was a result of the war in Vietnam of which Hong Kong plays no part.

I: How did those people who were screened-out react? What happened to them once they were screened-out?

PL: They were kept in detention camps. We can’t allow them to be put in open camps because otherwise they disappear and it is virtually impossible to find them. But the policy as agreed with the UNHCR and internationally, they are kept pending repatriation to Vietnam. Of course it took a long time to set up repatriation arrangements. I think the last time they were repatriated was well into the 1990’s, probably even some time after I left. But we just have to live with the fact that we can’t let them out into the streets of Hong Kong otherwise we will never be able to find them again. Of course, if I were them, I would understand that you wouldn’t like to be locked up.

The problem is that if they are non-refugees, no one else would take them. The Americans would keep saying that we were being inhumane in locking them up. But we said, ‘fine you can take them’. But nobody would take them. The Government of Vietnam took a very, very long time to repatriate a few of them. It was many years before their repatriation was completed. You can understand the frustration, but remember, these are not refugees. These are people from North Vietnam who have never been involved in the war itself, fighting for the North Vietnamese Government, who were never subjected to the kind of persecution that the initial arrivals from the South were subjected to. And now people like that are called economic migrants, and were screened out by a very, very well-grounded screening policy monitored by the UNHCR. And everyone who was screened out was allowed to appeal to tribunals, and then, even if the tribunals rejected their case, they were allowed to go to the courts, provided there was a court system. It was a very expensive business.

The cost of dealing with the boat people crisis doesn’t stem directly from the direct cost of feeding, housing, giving medical care and education but also involves a huge amount of money spent on litigations. And a lot of these appeals are to the courts and funded through the legal aid system in Hong Kong. And this was taxpayer’s money as well. I remember the time when I was Secretary for Security from 1995-1998. At any one time, there must have been hundreds of either appeals cases, or court cases, judicial review cases or the like. Hundreds. And every one of them was failing. But because they are under the laws of Hong Kong, if they meet certain income criteria – which they don’t – they qualify for legal aid. And those appeals also costed the Hong Kong Government money.

I: Apart from the financial burden to the Government, was there any direct affect to the Hong Kong people regarding the Vietnamese boat people?

PL: I’m sure there was. When you have two different people existing side by side, there has to be some kind of interaction. I hope this was benign in most case, rather than [malignant], but of course, human society is not perfect. There was the occasional conflict of one sort of another, people misunderstanding each other, you talk a different language and it is very different ot misunderstand each other. You come from a different society, etc. But by and large, there were very few cases, that I can remember of actual hostilities between the refugees and Hong Kong people. Of course in political terms, there was a great deal of adverse reaction of the people and especially the politicians against Vietnamese refugees’ arrival. That reaction incidentally was not directed at the Vietnamese itself, it was directed at the Government. The target was the Government, not the refugees themselves.

So leaving the relationship between the refugees and the people of Hong Kong, and you talked about the people, there were remarkably few adverse incidents of any sort. And when you come to think of it, at least until the time when non-refugees began to arrive in large numbers and were kept in detention camps, the bulk of the refugees when they went through the initial crisis were housed in camps that were managed by voluntary agencies. Now these are voluntary agencies employing mostly Hong Kong residents, although there were a few volunteers from America, Australia and anywhere else in the world. But mostly by Hong Kong people. There were very few situations where things come to an unhappy ending.

A lot of violence we saw later on wasn’t in refugee camps. It was mostly in detention camps, particularly where screened out refugees were housed. And particularly, a lot of that was stemming from hostility between different groups of Vietnamese within the camps itself. One of the things you see is the degree of impact, which I think was a benign impact. Since then, there have been a lot more Vietnamese restaurants of certain Vietnamese cuisine in Hong Kong, so much so that restaurants serving Vietnamese cuisine in Hong Kong are part of the regular restaurant scene.

I: So you were involved with finding accommodation for the refugees. Did you stay in your job there?

PL: No. Once the great rush was over, I stayed on and my responsibility got wider. In the beginning of 1980, my responsibility covered the entire range of things dealing with Vietnamese arrivals. I was in the time a Principal Assistant for Security, and initially when I first arrived in the Security Branch in the middle of 1979, we then had two Principal Assistant Secretaries.

When the rush of new arrivals had come down a bit and we managed to find places for refugee camps, we reduced our numbers by one so there was one PS dealing with the entire range of things with the refugees in Hong Kong. There were a few – less than 10 people in the Security Branch – dealing with the refugee crisis. I had one boss, Deputy Secretary. And by the late 80’s, even that position was gone. The refugee division was restructured, so I was heading the entire division and my boss was the Secretary for Security, who of course has many other responsibilities. But once you have dealt with the initial crisis and things begin to act like a machine, you have less need for involvement at the policy level. Because most of the people delivering the services are treated as a normal part of their arrangement because it is established. So you have less need for intervention, less need for officers at the policy level.

I: How long were you in that position?

PL: In the spring of 1981 before I was transferred out to do something else. I was in the administrative services of the Hong Kong Government, which is not a department specifically. We can do a range of jobs in a number of departments, so we get transferred post to post every two-four years. And we’re never supposed to stay in the same department for too long.

I: was that the end of your experience with the Vietnamese boat people?

PL: That ends for a very long time, because from about the time I was transferred out of Security Branch in ’81 to early ‘95, I had virtually nothing to do with the Vietnamese boat people crisis. In early 1995, I was posted at that time at a high-level back to the Security Branch as the Secretary for Security. Which has as its responsibility overseeing the entire range of emergency services and law and order departments which included the police, customs, immigration, fire, ambulance, liaison with the military etc. A whole range of security issues.

One of my responsibilities at the time was to be responsible for the entire range of issues remaining with the Vietnamese boat people crisis. But at that time, things had moved on quite a bit. I don’t think I can remember the exact numbers, but there was something like 30-40 000 Vietnamese remaining in Hong Kong. But mostly, the bulk of them would be screened out as non-refugees pending repatriation. A small number were pending. A small number were screened in and waiting. There were still several thousand of them in manageable numbers. But the screened out Vietnamese were of course the most difficult ones.

I: In what way?

PL: First, they didn’t get what they wanted. Most of them want to come to Hong Kong as a stepping stone to somewhere in the West – America is the usual preferred place of destination – and they know they didn’t get it. The United States made it absolutely clear that they won’t accept them. No other country would accept them. The UNHCR told them there is no future for them, other than to volunteer and return home. And a lot of them were still trying to hold on. There were still some other NGO’s who were still finding them hope, one way or another. I won’t comment on their motives or what they did, but with these people, we have to remember that going back to them, a large number mostly had very little education. They came from a very poor rural part of North Vietnam. But what they are facing back in Vietnam is probably less than what they get in detention camps in Hong Kong. They have less hope of resettlement in their country. So initially very few of them volunteered to return to Vietnam. But of course with a great deal of effort, we undertook an orderly repatriation program where they were sent back without them volunteering to do so.

Under the UNHCR and voluntary agencies, no violence or undue force was used. The arrangement was then that they would be repatriated under safe conditions. We had a charter to fly them back to Hanoi at great expense, I must say, as soon as their acceptance was cleared by the Vietnamese Government, they were given some money and belongings to take back to Vietnam for resettlement. The UNHCR gave them a small repatriation grant as well.

I: Were you in that position until the end of the crisis?

PL: Almost until the end. When I left the Government in 1998, there were still some who were tending repatriation. If I remember correctly, there were also still some refugees waiting for resettlement. I think these are mostly the ‘difficult’ ones, or ‘un-resettable’ refugee cases. They were unable to be resettled for a combination of health – both physical and mental, drug habits, disability, and lack of overseas relatives. There were still a few thousand of them. Eventually, I think we accepted the fact that they probably had to stay. Throughout the whole of the refugee crisis, beginning in the late 70’s and early 80’s, Hong Kong itself offered a resettlement quota to some of them. I can’t remember the exact numbers, but it was never filled.

They didn’t actually want to stay in Hong Kong. They wanted to go to Australia, America and Germany etc. The Hong Kong quota wasn’t filled up. At the end of the day when there is no realistic prospect of their resettlement overseas, they just have to be accepted as part of Hong Kong’s population. And I’m sure they are still there, living just as any ordinary Hong Kong citizen. They rent their own accommodation, they have their own job, and they are no longer in refugee camps. I think we closed the last refugee camp for them – ‘Pillar Point’ – in late 1999. I left the Government by then. But around more or less the same time, I think we closed virtually, we sent back screened out cases back to Vietnam. We closed off all the detention camps one after the other. The last one to close was in 1999.

I: Apparently the situation carried on even after Hong Kong was returned to China. How did that affect the handling of the [situation]?

PL: By that time, everybody had quite a clear idea as to what was going to happen. This was that the bulk of them would be returned to Vietnam. There was a small number who would not be resettle- able elsewhere which we would have to accept. There was a big chunk of money UNHCR [owed] us and couldn’t repay. Nobody had any realistic expectation that things would be any different. It was partly a question of time, when we had done everything. And partly a question of playing down the politics of it. Ok, politics and policy we just do all the work necessary, get the thing over and done with and the politics will disappear. And they have disappeared. Although, as I said, the UNHCR’s debts are still on the books of the Hong Kong Government.

I: It will be a great time to celebrate when they repay?

PL: I may not live to see the day.

I: Really? Given the experiences and the involvement of your experiences with the Vietnamese boat people, I wouldn’t say one was less difficult than the other?

PL: It was difficult for different reasons. The first phase – late 70’s to early 81 – it was difficult because we were faced with an influx. And we were caught unprepared, and that was the difficulty. In [a] very short time, we had to accommodate a large number of people. But the people were mostly cooperative. Mostly very grateful for our treatment. At the tail end of it, the arrangements for handling several tens of thousands of Vietnamese boat people who are not refugees in detention camps – it’s all in place. But it’s unpleasant because the people who are in detention camps, they didn’t like us. They were from a different ‘breed’ from the ordinary refugees we got in the 70s and 80s. And some of them were pretty violent, which partly explains the violent confrontations in the camps in the late 1990’s. There was a reaction to the fact that, when finally, about the time when I returned, they realised that’s the end of the game as far as trying to hold out in Hong Kong. They were faced with the prospect that they would be returned to Vietnam, whether they liked it or not.

Their initial reaction was to resort to violence. At the end of the day, especially, I have to take my hat off to our correctional services colleagues who handled it extremely well. It was, in many instances, a personal danger to our CSD colleagues themselves. But we managed to contain them. We managed to continue our normal management regime for each detention camp without imposing much hard measures. We just take it in our stride. Those inmates who had actually committed crimes in most cases, there would be harming people. Sometimes themselves. Of course, if they committed the crime, they are in Hong Kong which is a place where the rule of law dictates that they have to be prosecuted and they have to serve sentences which the courts decides under the common law. But other than that, we don’t necessarily impose any harsh measures on them, even when they were rioting.

I: For those who would receive the sentences for their crimes, would they eventually return to Vietnam?

PL: Theoretically, there is no particular reason why they can’t be returned to Vietnam after they have served their sentences. We don’t remit their sentences and send them back, just because they are ready to be repatriated. That is part of the laws of Hong Kong. But, not every one of them was returned, because if you have murdered someone, you are going to have to serve a very long sentence in Hong Kong. I’m not even sure that when he gets out of prison, Vietnam will take him back at all. But I can’t say that there are a large number of them.

Mostly, if you are talking about large numbers, most people do not set out to cause serious injury or harm to people, except when they are in a confrontational situation and things get a little bit out of hand. But it’s not premeditated murder. So as far as my recollection goes, they are not usually given very long sentences when it’s causing bodily harm.