From: mdo@socrates.umd.edu ("Mike T. Do")
Subject: [SOC] More Vietnamese leaving Hong Kong than arriving
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Date: 5 Jan 93 04:12:40 GMT

>From Washington Times (12/31/92)
By Bert Okuley
The Washington Times

HONG KONG-Hong Kong will remember 1992 as the year that Vietnamese "boat
people" finally stopped arriving after 17 years, according to the chief U.N.
refugee official here.  He said an easing of the U.S. embargo on Vietnam will
make 1993 even better.
     "This year definitely was the turning point," said Robert Van Leeuwen,
head of the Hong Kong mission of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR).
     "Our priority for 1993 will be to sustain the momentum of voluntary
repatriation.  Throughout Southeast Asia, in fact, the number of refugee
departures has been virtually nil this year," he said.
     Only a dozen boat people appeared in Hong Kong's territorial waters this
year, down from the 34,112 who washed ashore in 797 jerry-built vessels in
1989.
     Meanwhile, 12,072 boat people went the other way-back to Hanoi-compared
with 7,660 in 1991.
     "The entire problem is now scaling down," Mr. Van Leeuwen said in an
interview this week.  "Now, perhaps our major challenge will be to see the
return home of unaccompanied minors."
     There are still about 45,000 Vietnamese languishing in Hong Kong's
refugee detention centers, a majority of them living in wretched conditions.
About 25,700 have been rejected for resettlement elsewhere, while just 2,946
are waiting resettlement in the West.
     The young are of particular concern, Mr. Van Leeuwen said.  Many are
growing up with no memory of anything other than life behind high fences in
the often remote camps, and in a world governed more by armed thugs than by
camp guards.
     "We've got to convince the young that life in detention is not the life
for them," the U.N. official said.  "We have seen absolutely no indication of
any returnee being persecuted back in Vietnam.  None whatsoever."
     The number of boat people returning home has risen to more than 1,000 a
month.  The UNHCR has been showing special videos at the camps, emphasizing
to the detainees how life in their homeland is improving.
     The easing of the U.S. economic blockade is becoming another selling point
for the refugee officials.
     "We're actively educating them that once you're screened out [rejected]
you're not a refugee," said one worker.  "There's no possibility of resettle-
ment overseas and no point in staying in Hong Kong-so the sooner you go back,
the better."
     Still fresh in some minds is the disaster on the night of Feb 3 when 24
Vietnamese, including 12 children, died in a fire that engulfed Hut 6 at the
Sek Kong detention center.
     The blaze followed more than an hour of rioting by camp inmates.  An
official inquiry determined that a group of South Vietnamese had stuffed
burning blankets into the hut where more than 200 frightened North Vietnamese
were hiding.
     About 9,000 were being housed at Sek Hong at the time.
     The first statement on mandatory repatriation between Hong Kong and Hanoi
was signed in November 1991.  The first planeload of departees was seen on
world television struggling with guards forcing them about planes at the Kai
Tak airport.
     Those pictures are now in what seems the distant past-as distant as the
1980s, when it was common for hundreds of people to sail into Victoria Harbor
or one of the outlying islands of this tiny territory withing a single 24-hour
period.

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