More than 260 Vietnamese boat people returned voluntarily to their homeland Wednesday, two days after Britain and Vietnam agreed to send back a small group of Vietnamese against their will.
Meanwhile, more than 6,000 Vietnamese held peaceful demonstrations against plans to forcibly repatriate boat people who cannot prove they fled to this British colony because of political persecution.A Cathay Pacific charter flight from Hong Kong to Hanoi took 263 Vietnamese home Wednesday in accordance with a voluntary repatriation program supervised by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that began in 1989.
They were the first Vietnamese to go back on their own accord since Monday's British-Vietnamese agreement to deport 256 boat people who came to Hong Kong a second time after returning voluntarily to their Communist homeland.
No date has been set for the return of those "double-backers."