A MASSIVE police search was under way yesterday for 130 Vietnamese people who were still at large after a mass break out from a Hong Kong detention centre, which left scores injured and the camp ablaze.
Riot police fired over 1,800 tear gas rounds after the asylum seekers attacked them with homemade spears and clubs made from steel pipes, police said.
Some 3,000 people were involved in rioting which turned the camp into a virtual war zone. At one stage 15 wardens were held hostage for some time. Some 2,000 police and prison officers were deployed at the height of the trouble.
Officers were beaten and robbed by those escaping, while the camp canteen was looted and workers also robbed, according to witnesses. By early evening the situation was under control, although around 400 Vietnamese remained protesting on the roof tops.
With police roadblocks thrown up around the Whitehead detention centre and nearby Shatin town in the eastern New Territories, 70 of the estimated 200 on the run were recaptured by early evening, police said.
Some Vietnamese made their escape on sampans stolen from a nearby fishing village, after ran sacking the homes of residents evacuated from the tear gas fumes.
It was one of the worst camp riots in Hong Kong's history, with 43 police, prison officers and fire fighters injured. Thirty Vietnamese were also hurt. Eleven people required hospital treatment.
Hong Kong's Acting Governor, Mr Anson Chan, visiting victims in hospital, said that "the incident and the behaviour of inmates, particularly resorting to violence and causing damage to life and limb and property is deplorable behaviour which we will not tolerate." He said "We are all very sorry that staff have been injured," and he added that they had "exercised with the greatest restraint and with the greatest courage."
Twenty six buildings were burned down or damaged and 53 cars and government vehicles destroyed. A government spokesman said the destruction of some camp records may hamper repatriation plans. The fire took around 11 hours to put out, with helicopters dropping water bombs to douse the flames.
The Secretary for Security, Mr Peter Lai, called the break out "a wanton, probably premeditated, act of destruction, which will not deter us from carrying out our policy of returning all Vietnamese migrants back to Vietnam
Mr Zhang Junsheng, deputy director of Xinhua news agency, China's de facto consulate in Hong Kong, accused Britain of placing "mental and financial burdens" on the people of Hong Kong by allowing the territory to be a port of first asylum for those who fled Vietnam. He said Britain had not lived up to promises of resolving the boat people problem.
Mr Zhang reiterated Beijing's call that all Vietnamese boat people be repatriated before China resumes sovereignty of the territory on July 1st 1997.
Ms Pam Baker, a lawyer for Refugee Concern, which has been seeking the release of Vietnamese boat people who have been illegally detained, said "When you lock people up, these things will happen". The incident was the eighth and most serious disturbance at a boat people camp in Hong Kong in the past year. Despite the trouble, more than 900 Vietnamese were transferred to the High Island Detention Centre yesterday, pending their return to Vietnam, a government spokesman said.
There are approximately 18,000 Vietnamese asylum seekers in Hong Kong, some held in closed camps for up to eight years. Their applications to be considered political refugees have been rejected by the UN authorities, who say they are economic migrants.