CLAIMS that a planned transfer of 100 'screened-out' Vietnamese boat people has been postponed for fear the operation would clash with the visit of British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd this week, were strongly denied by the Government last night.
Earlier, sources said the group would have been taken from the High Island Detention Centre as part of an 'orderly repatriation' programme under new guidelines recommended by an independent board of inquiry in June.
The body had been set up on the Governor's orders to investigate the 'excessive' use of tear-gas during the combined police and Correctional Services Department operation at the Whitehead camp on April 7.
Last night, the Deputy Secretary for Security, Ken Woodhouse, denied that any operation had been planned.
'It is absolutely not true,' he said.
But according to one source, the operation, arranged at a meeting held by Chief Secretary Anson Chan Fang On-sang when she was Acting Governor, was only called off last week when officials realised the potential for a protest that could embarrass Mr Hurd on his visit. The operation would have been the first of its kind since the Whitehead raid.