Nun expects to leave

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33818, 15 April 1975, Page 2

Nun expects to leave

(N.Z PA -Reuter—Copyright)

SAIGON, April 14

A New Zealand nun who spent seven weeks as a captive of the Viet Cong earlier this year was today trying to arrange for one of her companions in the ordeal to leave South Vietnam.

Sister Mary Laurence, aged 45, said she had man-

aged to arrange a passport and exit visa for Sister Lea, a Taiwanese who, with Sister Laurence and another New Zealand nun. Sister Mary Dorothy, was captured by the Viet Cong in January'.

But, said Sister Laurence, she had run into trouble when she tried to persuade a number of embassies to allow Sister Lea to work in missions in their countries.

Sister Lea, who left Taiwan as a child more than 40 years ago, did not want to return there because her order, Notre Dame des Missions. had no convents there, Sister Laurence said. Sister Laurence has been working on behalf of 16 orphans kept by her fellow nuns, and they are expected to leave for Australia tomorrow.

Sister Dorothy went to Australia with an earlier group of orphans, and is not expected to return to South Vietnam, “even though she’d like to,” according to Sister Laurence. She herself would “have to go when the New Zealand Embassy gives the word.” She said she was convinced that the Communists would take over, and that it would be impossible to continue working under Communist rule. In addition to Sister Lea and the orphans, she was trying to get some South Vietnamese out of the country, but was so far having no success.

The three nuns spent seven weeks behind Viet Cong lines after the capture of Phuoc Long province, northeast of Saigon, in January. They had run a centre for the Montagnard hill

tribes in Phuoc Long’s capital, Phuoc Binh. They fled with thousands of others just before it fell. After trekking through jungle and swamp for six days, they were captured by Viet Cong soldiers and held first in a prisoner of war camp, then in a tiny house near the town of Loc Ninh, north of Saigon. Since her release, Sister Laurence has been working with about 800 Montagnard refugees from Phuoc Long among the 27,000 people crammed into a camp southeast of Saigon. She said they had been provided with food and medicine — and axes, which they had used to cut bamboo for sale to local people. The Montagnards were keen to be moved to a more permanent resettlement area where they could build their own houses, she said.