Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Wed, 18 Nov 1992 10:27:04 -0500
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      NEWS/VN: Flow of Vietnamese boat people drops to a trickle

11/17

Flow of Vietnamese Boat People Drops to a Trickle

By William Branigin
 Washington Post Foreign Service

   HONG GAI, Vietnam - For Nguyen Bich Hanh, the 12-day trip to Hong Kong
across stormy seas in a crowded fishing boat earlier this year had seemed a way
to escape an unhappy family life and the poverty of this coal-mining corner of
northeastern Vietnam.
   She hoped to be accepted there as a political refugee and given help in
resettling in a Western country. But after eight months in a teeming, often
violent, prison-like camp, Hanh, now 13, joined thousands of other Vietnamese
boat people in opting to return to her homeland.
   Faced with increased hostility from countries that once offered temporary
asylum in the region and with diminished chances of resettling abroad,
Vietnamese have practically stopped leaving their country in rickety boats.
Amid growing economic opportunities in their homeland, they are returning in
record numbers.
   Last year, more than 20,000 Vietnamese boat people arrived in Hong Kong, the
main destination for would-be refugees in recent years. So far this year, only
a dozen have landed there, and fewer than 50 others have turned up elsewhere in
Southeast Asia.
   In terms of departures from Vietnam, "the boat people problem is over," said
Jon Liden, a Norwegian spokesman for Nordic Assistance to Repatriated
Vietnamese, a group that helps unaccompanied children, such as Hanh, who return
to Vietnam. "It has finally sunk in that there is no way out of these camps"
for Vietnamese detained in Hong Kong and elsewhere in the region.
   "Before, we were trying to repatriate people, but illegal departures (from
Vietnam) were continuing," said Marie-France Sevestre, who heads the Hanoi
office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. "Now we can expect to see an
end to this problem of boat people."
   Another factor in reversing the flow was a cutoff imposed last year on $360
stipends that had been provided by the U.N. refugee office to Vietnamese
internees who agreed to join a voluntary repatriation program. After
determining that the money had become an incentive for Vietnamese to make the
trip to Hong Kong, the agency declared that anyone arriving after Sept. 27,
1991, would not be eligible for financial support.
   Since the repatriation program was begun in March 1989 in an attempt to ease
the region's refugee crisis, about 33,000 Vietnamese have returned, most of
them voluntarily from Hong Kong. In the past year, other Vietnamese have
forcibly been sent back by Hong Kong authorities aboard six flights under a
controversial agreement with Vietnam.
   Human rights groups have charged that screening procedures in Hong Kong are
unfair and often disqualify legitimate refugees - those seeking to escape
political persecution rather than economic hardships. U.N. officials say boat
people routinely invent political motives for seeking better economic
conditions abroad. In addition, they say, no evidence has been found of
political reprisals by the Hanoi government against returnees.
   For refugee officials, the main problem now is the fate of more than 97,000
Vietnamese in camps around Asia. Of that number, only about 11,500 have been
recognized as political refugees with a well-founded fear of persecution in
their homeland. The rest either have been "screened out" by local authorities
as economic migrants or are awaiting decisions on their cases.
   Of the total, nearly 50,000 are crammed into detention centers in Hong Kong
that resemble concentration camps. Surrounded by high fences topped with barbed
wire, many of these camps display an atmosphere of hopelessness and have become
breeding grounds for crime, gangs, gambling and violence.
   It was in one of these camps, the Sek Kong detention center, that Hanh found
herself last year at the age of 12. She was detained there as a presumed
economic migrant after arriving with 43 people aboard a fishing boat from this
port in Quang Ninh Province bordering China. Her story illustrates the plight
of an estimated 4,500 unaccompanied minors in camps for Vietnamese in Southeast
Asia, about 85 percent of whom have been found ineligible for resettlement as
political refugees.
   Like many other boat people, Hanh left for reasons unrelated to the
Communist one-party political system that prevails in Vietnam despite
capitalist economic reforms.
   "My father divorced my mother, and I was so sad that I decided to leave,"
she said as she sat at a table arrayed with snacks and drinks for sale outside
her tiny house here. "I didn't have any expectations at all. I just wanted to
go there."
   She said an aunt lives in another camp and an uncle made it to Canada after
sailing to Hong Kong in 1985 before tough restrictions on refugee status were
applied, but she said she was unable to contact either of them.
   A cousin who worked for the boat's owner arranged a place for her at a
cut-rate price of about $30. The normal fare was about $100. She dropped out of
school and, with her father's blessing, set off. But the boat had to wait out a
storm on the Chinese island of Hainan, and it was 12 days before the famished
passengers arrived in the British colony.
   At the camp, Hanh said, Vietnamese men secretly made liquor from rice and
sometimes became violent after losing in gambling sessions. One night, she
recalled, an enraged loser smashed another man's face with a hammer as he lay
sleeping in her crowded barracks.
   "He bled a bucket of blood," she said. "There were a lot of thefts and
fights. . . . I was so afraid. If I stayed there, I could become a victim."
   She decided to come home last December. By then, however, her friends were a
grade ahead of her in school, and she said she has been too embarrassed to
resume classes.
   Now she tends her makeshift store and lives with her father, Nguyen Manh Do,
39, a former North Vietnamese army sergeant, and his new wife. Both work for a
railroad that carries coal from nearby mines to the port here. Together, they
are paid about $34 a month.
   "At first, I didn't want her to go," Do said. "But she was so determined
that I finally gave my permission. I also hoped that she would be able to
resettle in a third country and that later she might be able to assist her
family."
   He knew she had no claim to political refugee status, he said, but neither
had her uncle, his first wife's brother, who had worked as a driver before
leaving in 1985. "The only problem we face is that we are poor," Do said.
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