The World - News from Aug. 15, 1989

Hong Kong rejected U.N. criticism that it has mistreated some of the 50,000 Vietnamese “boat people” who have flocked to the British colony. A team from the Geneva headquarters of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees had warned that serious overcrowding would lead to fresh outbreaks of violence among frustrated inmates of refugee camps. “The space is less than the space given to people in prison here. It is even less than what is supposed to be given here for a dog,” Omar Bakhet, head of the agency’s technical support unit, said on local radio. However, Hong Kong’s refugee coordinator, Mike Hanson, called the criticism “entirely unreasonable” and noted that “we can’t build new accommodations overnight.”