Hunger In S.-E. Asia ‘Our Real Enemy’

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30803, 15 July 1965, Page 14

Hunger In S.-E. Asia ‘Our Real Enemy’

“It is not the Communists who are our real enemy at the moment—it is hunger,” Mr N. G. Hattaway, a Christchurch solicitor who recently returned from a tour of South-east Asian countries, including Vietnam, told a luncheon meeting of the Christchurch Accountant Students’ Society yesterday.

Though photographs of them appeared almost daily in the newspapers there was a tendency to think vaguely of inhabitants of a country such as Vietnam, he said. “The main thing is to be aware that these are people —people living in poverty when we have so much here,” Mr Hattaway said. Describing life in Vietnam, Mr Hattaway said he went to Saigon U visi “Project Concern.” an international medical welfare organisation working among the Vietnamese.

“Saigon today is a city which you can see has been beautiful, but it is run down, an - ' you see the armed military everywhere.” People lived there in a

c .nstant state of tension, not knowing what would happen next. Into Viet Cong Country From Saigon he travelled well into Viet Cong country t< Dalat, a village 230 miles north-east of the city, and then to another village. Dampau. a further 50 miles away. Twisting through the jungle, along primitive narrow roads in a utility vehicle, he expected an ambush at any time; but none occurred. At Dampau was a “Project Co n cern” hospital, with one main room, in which 19 patients—men, women, and children suffering from all kinds of disease—lay on stretchers. Others of their families, who had come to the hospital with them, were camped outside the building. There was also a dispensary and two interviewing rooms for dealing with 50 outpatients daily. A barbed-wire fence surrounded the hospital, and it was guarded by armed sentries. The staff— American, Canadian, and Chinese doctors and nurses —seemed quite unconcerned about the danger to which they were continually exposed. Mr Hattaway accompanied doctors to two more villages about 20 miles from Dampau The people there wanted only to be free to lead their own simple lives, he said. Around the villages were stockades and the inevitable barbed wire; within, slit trenches had been dug in readiness for an attack from the Viet Cong. “These are people with hopes and aspirations, yet they are living in conditions which we would not tolerate iu our own country,” Mr Hattaway said. “What can we do to help these people?” Agricultural Aid

In answering this question, he said he had been shown the work of the Nationalist Chinese agricultural mission on land about a mile from Bien Hoa air base. Improved methods of cultivation and harvesting had been introduced. Members of the mission had taken a pump given by Australia, which was lying unused in a shed, and demonstrated how irrigation meant that rice need not be planted only in the rainy season.

Mr Hattaway said he was not criticising the Australians, but it was not sufficient to provide money and machinery. Someone actually working among the people had to show them how to put these to use. “This is the most effective way we can help in developing countries,” he said. New Zealanders prepared to spend one or two years abroad could show these people what could be done not only in agriculture but in other fields necessary for development. “This is . a form of aid which is really appreciated and effective," he said. “1 think that unless we are prepared to recognise this need and do something about it the trouble in Vietnam at present will appear in other South-east Asian countries.”