118 Vietnamese Flown Home From Hong Kong

HONG KONG â€”  Stepping up its deportation of Vietnamese migrants, Hong Kong flew 118 asylum-seekers back to their homeland Tuesday.

Hundreds of other Vietnamese climbed onto detention center rooftops to protest the first phase of a plan to repatriate an estimated 600 Vietnamese living in camps within the next two weeks.

A government statement said those being deported were not involved in the riot and breakout Friday and Saturday at the Whitehead Detention Center, in which 46 people were injured. As many as 120 Vietnamese escaped; 91 have been recaptured.

Nearly 1,000 police and prison officers searched the detention center Tuesday, arresting 35 inmates and seizing 2,457 homemade spears and clubs.

Hong Kong has deported 2,640 Vietnamese asylum-seekers since November 1991, and thousands more have returned voluntarily.

Deportations are closed to the media on the grounds that they have become routine. A report by two charity workers appointed to observe the operation said two people were handcuffed but that there was no serious resistance.

The 17,500 Vietnamese in Hong Kong camps are left over from the waves of asylum-seekers who began fleeing Vietnam after U.S.-backed South Vietnam fell to the Communist North in 1975.

The government says they are not political refugees but economic migrants who should go home. Many of them have spent years in the camps, refusing cash incentives to return to Vietnam.

Hong Kong is eager to close the camps before the British colony returns to Chinese rule in 1997.

China said Tuesday that it was greatly concerned by the rioting and warned that the violence threatened the stability of the territory.

Hong Kong planned to deport more Vietnamese today, and two more flights are scheduled later this month.