More orphans may be moved despite criticism

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33815, 11 April 1975, Page 9

More orphans may be moved despite criticism

(A'eu; Zealand Press Association—Copyright)

PHNOM PENH. April 10.

Plans are being made to fly hundreds of Cambodian orphans to the United States and Australia amid vehement criticism from American diplomats that the Indo-China babylifts are a “phony emotional issue.” \\ orld \ ision, a United States relief agency, is planning to send more than 200 children to families waiting for them in the United States. Iwo free-lance American journalists, Denis Cameron and Lee Rudakewych, are trving to organise an airlift of at least 350 orphans to Australia.

So far only 22 children have left.

A United States Embassy spokesman stressed that the only part it is going to play is to provide transport out of the country for the journalists’ babylift. He said that the Embassy had not intervened with the Cambodian Government for permission to move the orphans.

Reliable United States sources said that the Embassy agreed to help Cameron and Rudakewych only after explicit instructions 'from Washington.

“It’s a phony issue to take people’s minds off the real events here,” one United States diplomat said. “The American people have to get some phony emotional issue. That was the same with the p.o.w.s and now they have manufactured the orphan issue.”

This attitude was shared bv other Western officials. Several key United States Embassy officials regard the babylifts from Saigon and Phnom Penh as an attempt

to salve American feelings of guilt over Indo-China and to swing American public opinion behind the United States Government’s effort to continue military aid to the area. The Minister of Refugees (Mr Kong Orn) said that the Cabinet had recently passed a special measure allowing the orphans to depart without the usual formalities.

“The only solution is to let them go,” he said. “We fav-

our this evacuation to countries like the United States, Canada, Australia or Europe. These countries can take care of them.”

Cameron and Rudakewych hope to get their operation moving this week-end. They said that they have 350 children aged “from zero to 14” ready to leave and thar the Embassy had agreed to fly them to another Asian capita] — as yet not determined — where Australian aircraft would pick them up.

The two men estimated that there were “hundreds and hundreds” more orphans in Phnom Penh. They said that they had been informed that the Australian Prime Minister (Mr Gough Whitlam) was willing to accept all that can be moved. Cameron said that the Australian Adoptive Families Association was now trying to line up foster parents for the children.

They said that they chose Australia “to avoid any political implications involved in sending them to the United States.” In response to those opposed to removal of orphans from the country, they said that parentless children would be the most likely to suffer from disease, malnutrition, and violence if the Government lost Phnom Penh.