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Christus Rex Information ServiceHONG KONG (Sep 16, 1996 08:53 a.m. EDT) - Hong Kong set in motion its biggest mass transfer of Vietnamese boat people on Monday when police began moving thousands of the illegal immigrants from a remote island to a high-security camp.
Police boats bobbed near the pier at the Tai A Chau island camp as guards herded 496 inmates on board special ferries and shipped them to the Whitehead detention camp in the rural New Territories area, to get them ready for repatriation.
Monday's operation -- the first of about 10 to clear the 5,500 inmates from the island -- was completed without violence.
Reporters watched from a distance from aboard a boat as the Vietnamese left their huts and moved towards the jetty.
A long column of the boat people -- including elderly people and entire families of men, women and children -- filed along the jetty clutching bundles of possessions. Some smiled at the reporters and cameramen as they left the island.
There were no signs of violent resistance or self-inflicted injuries that have marked other mass transfers of Vietnamese illegals in Hong Kong and in nearby countries such as Thailand.
"I'm not surprised at all because in the past few years the Tai A Chau boatpeople have been very cooperative, very peaceful and abided by the camp's rules," assistant police commissioner Benny Ng said of Monday's smooth transfer.
Over the next nine days police will ship a similar number per day to clear the small island, which lies off the coast of Lantau, the largest isle in the Hong Kong archipelago. Ng was confident the rest of the runs would be equally peaceful.
The operation is a crucial phase in the accelerated drive to empty Hong Kong's camps by forced and voluntary repatriations before the British colony is handed back to China in mid-1997.
Beijing insists they must all be gone. But Hong Kong is not the only place wiping clean the boatpeople slate. Similar drives across southeast Asia have been under way this year to clear the camps and send the illegal migrants home.
Hong Kong has virtually halved its population of boatpeople this year to about 12,000 through repatriations.
Authorities have consolidated the camp network through closures, mergers and transfers over the past few months.
The detainees are the last of a flood of tens of thousands of Vietnamese who fled their country after the communists won the Vietnam War in 1975.
Police launches escorted the ferries departing from Tai A Chau in case detainees tried to leap into the sea and escape.
A firefighting boat was also deployed, and paramedic units were stationed on the island in case of violence.
"We hope that by transferring them to Whitehead, more boat people will be encouraged to apply for voluntary repatriation," said Security Branch spokesman Mak Kwok-wah.
"The voluntary repatriation level has been very low at Tai A Chau. There were only 170 or so volunteers there last year," he told reporters at the scene.
Whitehead was rocked by fierce rioting in May when inmates burned down part of the camp and attempted a mass breakout. The fugitives were quickly rounded up.
Tai A Chau was also hit by a riot in 1989 after the first wave of repatriations, when police had to beat a hasty retreat from the island in the face of overwhelming violence.
TIMISOARA, Romania (Sep 16, 1996 08:53 a.m. EDT) - Romania and Hungary signed a treaty on Monday to end a centuries-old rift between the two neighbours and help them join NATO and the European Union.
The deal caps five years of negotiations over the status of Romania's 1.6 million ethnic Hungarians and Romania's insistence that the pact should guarantee its borders.
Romania's President Ion Iliescu, Premier Nicolae Vacaroiu and Hungary's Prime Minister Gyula Horn were greeted with military honours when they arrived in the western city, site of Romania's 1989 revolt which ended five decades of communism.
"We have witnessed a special event, with deep impact on Romanian-Hungarian relations, and with a European and international impact," Vacaroiu said after signing the document with Horn.
The long-delayed treaty is expected to end political sabre-rattling between Bucharest and Budapest and lay the ground for historic reconciliation.
Ethnic Hungarians want greater language and education rights while Romanian nationalists accuse Budapest of trying to turn back history to a time when Romania's central Transylvania region was ruled by Austria-Hungary.
Ignoring opposition from nationalists in their countries, Bucharest and Budapest unexpectedly agreed last month a treaty text that sidesteps the most sensitive issues.
The Hungarians dropped demands for ethnic autonomy for the minorities that had fuelled Romanian fears of a Yugoslav-type secession, in exchange for minority rights guarantees.
The pact, agreed under Western pressure, is vital for both countries' ambitions to join the EU and NATO.
"The treaty represents a reasonable compromise," said Romanian Foreign Minister Teodor Melescanu.
Melescanu, who accompanied the Romanian delegation to Timisoara, said he did not expect the treaty to solve all disputes, but the document "will create a framework which will help both countries to solve all problems step by step."
Nationalists from the Romanian National Unity Party (PUNR) attacked the treaty on Sunday, saying it jeopardised "the country's national sovereignty and integrity."
"PUNR will not take part in this funeral ceremony," a PUNR statement said of the signing ceremony in Timisoara.
Early on Monday several hundred anti-government protesters booed Iliescu and Vacaroiu as they entered the building of the local government's office in central Timisoara which was surrounded by tight security and cordons of riot police.
"We want it to be clear, we have nothing against the treaty, but we an axe to grind against Iliescu and Vacaroiu," Nicolae Lazar, one of the protesters, told Reuters.
Ethnic Hungarian leaders from the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) also boycotted the signing ceremony.
UDMR said they would call a vigil later on Monday in Timisoara's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Timisoara, 600 km (375 miles) west of Bucharest, on the border with Yugoslavia and Hungary, is a melting pot for Romania's ethnic groups including Hungarians, Germans, Serbs, Ukrainians, Bulgarians and Jews who pride themselves on a long tradition of living together in harmony.
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