Vietnamese sent to China

MORE than 100 Vietnamese illegal immigrants from China are due to be handed over the border in an early morning operation today.

Those selected as the first batch to be repatriated under a deal struck between Hong Kong and the mainland last week will be put on a boat around dawn to take them from Chi Ma Wan Detention Centre to Castle Peak in the New Territories.

They will then be transferred to trucks and driven to Sha Tau Kok and handed over to officials from the refugee reception and resettlement office of Guangdong province.

The handover of the Vietnamese, the first returnees out of more than 2,400 people who flooded into the territory in July and August, will be monitored by liaison officers from Hong Kong and Guangdong, and by Assistant Director of Immigration, Alex Yeung Chun-kong.

About half of the 100 deportees are likely to be moved to the Yinghong Tea Farm about 200 kilometres northwest of Shenzhen, a self-sufficient community where 10,000 ethnic Chinese Vietnamese refugees - who fled Vietnam in the late 1970s - have settled.

Farm officials said they had been informed that 40 Vietnamese would be taken to their community.