From: mdo@socrates.umd.edu ("Mike T. Do")
Subject: [NEWS] Flow of Vietnamese to Hong Kong Seems Over, to Hong Kong's Relief
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Date: 17 Nov 92 05:28:58 GMT

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Flow of Vietnamese to Hong Kong Seems Over, to Hong Kong's Relief
From New York Times (11/16/92)
By Nicholas D. Kristof
Special to the New York Times

Hong Kong, Nov 11-After 17 years in which more than 1.5 million Vietnamese fled
their homeland, the exodus appears to have ended, and the refugee experts say
they belive that the long catastrophe of the "boat people" is finally winding
to a close.
    The exodus was one of the tragedies of the latter part of this century.
Tens of thousands of Vietnamese were drowned at sea or killed by pirates
while trying to escape, and nearby countries sometimes tried to deter the
boat people from landing by firing on them as they approached the shore or by
towing their rickety boats back out to sea.
    Even for those who landed safely in places like Hong Kong, there has been
no quick deliverance.  About 48,000 Vietnamese are still in bleak camps in
this British territory, with some having waited for a decade to be resettled
in the West.
    Recent statistics suggest that the huge migration may finally have ended.
Only nine Vietnamese arrived in Hong Kong in the first nine months of this
year, and now only three since then, compared to more than 20,000 in the
similar period last year.
    New arrivals have also slowed to a trickle elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
In the first eight months of this year, only 18 Vietnamese landed in
Indonesia, 9 in Thailand, 1 in Malaysia and none in Singapore, Macao or
Philippines.
    "Everything points to the fact that this is a problem that is passing
into the pages of history," said Brian J. Bresnihan, refugeee coodinator for
the Hong Kong government.  "The decline in the exodus is one of the most
important elements of this, and the other is the increased willingness of
people in the camps to return to Vietnam."
    No one entirely rules out the possiblity of a resumption in the exodus; a
lull in the early 1980's was followed by another surged of migrants chasing
rumors of relaxed resettlement policies.  But most experts believe that a
resumption is quite unlikely, in part because the returning Vietnamese are
now carrying with them the message that flight is a dead end.
    Just a year or two ago, the problem of the boat people was regularly
modified by the adjective "insoluble."  Last year, 21,900 Vietnamese arrivals
were reported by Southeast Asia countries, on top of 32,100 in 1990 and
70,000 in 1989.
    Until recently, the number of Vietnamese born in the camps in Hong Kong
exceeded the number of returning to Vietnam.  Some young children have no
memories of anything but life behind the barbed-wire fences, locked in a
world that is virtually a prison - except that it is run by gangs more than
by guards.
    "There is a repressive regime of unimaginable ghastliness inside these
concentration camps here," said Michael T. Darwyne, a Hong Kong lawyer and
advocate for the Vietnamese.  "Hong Kong has persecuted the asylum seekers -
to a degree less than they are persecuted in Vietnam, but it has persecuted
them nonetheless.
    "We are imposing on them a psychological tortue and physical deprivation
of unparalleled proportions.  Under the stress of that, they are moving back
away from the cuntries where they have sought asylum, and particularly from
Hong Kong.  In that sense, what Hong Kong perceives as its problem is being
solved."
    Hong Kong officials acknowledge that the camps are grim but note that
there are Vietnamese-language schools and other facilities, and they say
conditions are not as bad as critics like Mr. Darwyne suggest.  One reason
why conditions are difficult to gauge is that journalists are allowed in the
camps only occasionally, on supervised tours arranged by the authorities.
    Only a tiny proportion of the boat people are deemed to be political
refugees eligble for resettlement in the West.  The rest are locked up in the
camps and told that their only way out is to return to Vietnam.  In the past,
most stuck it out, hoping against hope that the United States would change
its policies and take them in.
    Since autumn 1991, however, the number agreeing to return to Vietnam has
picked up sharly, to an average of about 1,000 a month.  A record 1,400 are
expected to return this month.  While Hong Kong has as many Vietnamese as all
other countries in the region combined, the numbers are also going down in
Indonesia, Malaysia and other countries.
    The xodus of the boat people began with a specific event - the collapse
of South Vietnam in 1975 - and so perhaps it was inevitable that it would
eventually end.  In addition, a complex web of factors help explain why the
Vietnamese are no longer fleeing their homeland and those abroad are
beginning to go back.
    While the phrase "boat people" is often used as shorthand for the
Vietnamese, some arrive by other means.  In recent years, many were "bus
people" who traveled by land through China before taking a boat for the final
hop to Hong Kong.
    The Vietnamese Government initially encouraged the flight, seeing it as
an opportunity to confiscate the wealth of the emigrants and to rid the
country of its ethnic Chinese minority.  Now Hanoi, eager to improve ties
with the West, seems eager to curb the outflow and take back those who fled.
   Foreign lands are much less alluring than they used to be:  Vietnamese
have learned, through the tragedy of lost and wasted lives of their friends
and relatives, that other countries will not offer them a better life.
   "The message is getting through about what the realities are," said Robert
Van Leeuwen, chief of the Hong Kong mission of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees.
    Another factor is the improvement in living standards in Vietnam as the
economy opens up.  Special videos have been shown in the camps in Hong Kong,
emphasizing the new opportunities if the Vietnamese return home.
    It also helps that the European Community has paid for projects that
offer returning boat people vocational training or small loans to start
businesses.  The United States said in September that it would contribute up
to $2 million for similar programs.
    While the horrors of privacy and drowning are now fading, new tragedies
are unfolding in the lives of people lilke 26-year-old Cam Jia Ninh, who has
been living in a camp in Hong Kong for more than five years.  Mr. Cam married
another Vietnamese, Pham Thi Thuy; they have a six-month son.
    Now the family is about to be split up, perhaps forever.  Hong Kong will
send Pham Thi Thuy and her son back to China.  Vietnam expelled Mr. Cam, an
ethnic Chinese, to China in 1978 and will not take him back; China refuses to
take Ms. Pham; Hong Kong refuses to allow them stay.
    Mr. Bresnihan, the refugee coordinator, said that while this kind of
separation is a terible thing, allowing such couples to settle in Hong Kong
would lead to a flood of similar marriages.
    The Hong Kong government interviewes all the Vietnamese arrivals to
screen out those whom it regards as genuine political refugees, and they are
resettled in the West.  But human rights groups such as Asia Watch have
criticized the screening procedures.
    "The real question is wheter screening is adequate, whether Hong Kong is
identifying those at risk," said Dinah PoKempner, a researcher at Asia Watch.
    There has been no proven case of a boat people being persecuted after
returning to Vietnam, but it is not clear that the West would find out if it
had happened only occasionally.
    Almost all of the returning Vietnamese are described as volunteers, but
the spur in many cases is the forced repatriation program that Hong Kong
instituted in May.  Some of the 38 Vietnames on the first flight had to be
dragged onto the plane, and Hong Kong was widely criticized for the action.
But the threat of being forcibly repatriated has encouraged people to
"volunteer".
    Sympathy in Hong Kong for the boat people seems to be extremely limited,
in part because illegal immigrants from China are forced back all the time -
about 60 a day. Many Hong Kong Chinese see no reason why the Vietnamese
should be treat differently.
    People in Hong Kong say the territory, a peck of land already crowded
with 5.8 million people, alread has done more than its due.  Many officials
and ordinary citizens are indignant that Americans should complain about the
repatriations when the United States forces migrants back to Mexico daily and
has been shipping refugees back to Haiti, where they appeared face greater
risk than those returned to Vietnam.
    Even though the exodus from Vietnam appears to have ended, it will take
several years for the camps to be emptied.  More than 18,000 are still
waiting to be screened to determine if they are political refugees or simply
economic migrants, who will be sent back.  The screening will not be
completed until 1994.
    Other countries in the regfion have not begun the kind of repatriation
program that Hong Kong has initiated, and perhaps as a result it could take
them longer to clear their camps.  Outside Hong Kong, Indonesia has the most
Vietnamese, with 15,000 followed by Malaysia with nearly 11,000.
    In the meantime, conditions in the camps remain grim.  Just a few weeks
ago, in a dispute about money, several Vietnamese chased another man into Red
Cross clinic and stabbed him to death in front of horrified nurses.
    Ms. PoKemper said that she had just returned from a trip to refugee camps
in Bosnia and that conditions there were much better than camps in Hong Kong:
"Morale was better and food was better, and there wasn't the despair and
complete social breakdown you have at the camp in Hong Kong."


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