Vietnam: kind compared with its ‘comrades’?

Press, 9 April 1980, Page 18

Vietnam: kind compared with its ‘comrades’?

By

RICHARD WEST

in the “Daily Telegraph.-’ London

With a change in the monsoon winds, the refugees have been starting to come once more to Hong Kong from Vietnam in fishing boats . and junks — but there are -.very much fewer than this time last -year. Some of the refugees try to get picked up by a passing freighter, but most are what are called “coast huggers,” who put in at various ports in China to buy food, water and fuel. The Chinese coastguards sometimes supply them with charts to help them to steer for Hong Kong. • In the last two or three years, more than 250*000 Vietnamese refugees of Chinese origin have actually settled in Communist China, four times as many as have come to Hong Kong. Most of these were from North Vietnam and crossed over the land border. They were mainly peasants, fishermen, factory workers or . coal miners; quite a few were Vietnamese Communist Party members. China was, and still is in theory, prepared to give re-' fuge to what it calls “capitalist” refugees from South Vietnam — those who formed the trading and business class until the fall of Saigon in April 1975. Some of these “capitalists”, have stopped in Communist China for as long as six months, but' most have continued' the, journey to Hong Kong and the world of free enterprise* '. A good proportion- of Chinese from North Vietnam have also opted for Hong’ Kong, as have , all the ethnic Vietnamese who how form . about 20 per cent of boat, people who make their escape northwards.

The word “escape” is now correct. Until the middle of last year, the Vietnamese security police sometimes 4 connived at, sometimes arranged, and occasionally ,•/ even enforced, the departure'.

of Chinese, from the country. Then cafne the Geneva Conference at which Vietnam, in deference to the protests of other countries in SouthEast Asia, agreed to prevent the continued departure of boat people. ' The Vietnamese authorities have come .down hard on officials who- take bribes to permit escapes. Boats are harder to buy. The police encourage informants on would-be escapers. Above all there are more rigorous coast patrols with the result, said a British official in Hong Kong, that seven out of 10 escapers are captured. The fishermen, who find it easy to get away, probably head for China where they can carry on working in a familiar environment. Because of the Vietnamese Government’s extra security, - as much as because of resettlement, Hong Kong’s population Of boat people has fallen from 73,000. at one point last year, to 47,258. Overcrowding is less bad in the camps, which seem to be well run by the United Nations Human Rights Commission. About.'6o per cent of the refugees go out to work in factories, markets or one o'f the new Vietnamese restaurants that specialise in rissoles ’ and malodorous rotten anchovy sauce. The boat people are reckoned industrious compared with .the “swimmers” — refugees from China — who are said to have lost their work ethic. A few of tile boat people ■ want 'to stay in Hong Kong, where ■ they speak the language and may have -’relatives, .but most want to go to. Canada or the United , States. : In,spite of this, quite a few have turned down a •new scheme by which they can go to the United .States after, a/period in a transit camp ift the Philippines. They suspect, apparently, with

good reason, that they may have to wait in the camp for as long as five years, with no chance to earn money and nothing to do except learn English'. I met a young man, a former student from Saigon University, who had turned down the Philippines scheme and shortly afterwards, to his great delight, had been accepted by Canada — a country that has behaved most admirably towards the boat people. The same cannot be said of certain Asian and European- countries which are nevertheless loud in detestation of communism. Both Thais and Malays last year towed boats out to sea and may be responsible for hundreds of deaths from drowning, starvation or murder by pirates. The British Prime 1 Minister, Mrs Thatcher, reversed the Labour Government’s generous policy on the rescue of boat people, until Lord Carrington persuaded her otherwise..

Some of the reasons given last year for not accepting the boat people now sound unconvincing. It was said by the Thais and Malaysians that Vietnam wanted to wreck their economies and destabilise their societies by dumping people upon their shores, but few of the refugees wanted to stay in the countries in which they landed; and they have done no apparent harm to the one place, Hong Kong, that accepted them.

Although Thailand was harsh and hysterical to the few thousand refugees from Vietnam, it has since calmly accepted — at least for the time being — 300,000 people from Laos and half a million from Cambodia. . Again it was said last year that the Vietnamese were sending in spies among the refugees. In an open boat? At the mercy of

pirates? The risk of death of at least 15 per cent? Only a spy of superhuman courage would take such an assignment.

Nor, looking back, was it right to condemn the Vietnamese with quite the ferocity heard last year. It is true that' the authorities demanded payment in , gold (in a year when the world price rose from $2OO to $7OO an ounce), but normally they allowed the refugees to take the rest of ’their gold and any dollars they might possess. . . .A’

For at least a year, until June, 1979, the Government tried to persuade the-Chinese not to leave, and riot to credit the scare stories put put: by Peking and Washington that they were- all- to be prosecuted and sent to jail.

Of course it was callous to let people put out to sea in small inadequate vessels —

but how else could they go with any chance of being accepted as refugees? Nd Western country would give them the visas they neede'd to travel by plane or passenger steamer. Of course it was harsh and unfair to deprive a whole social class of its business and livelihood — but what other Communist country has offered this class the chance to leave and, moreover, take even a part of its money? ' Not Russia, nor any country in Eastern Europe, and least of all China. They all condemned the bourgeoisie - ,to death, imprisonment dr at best -abject poverty. It was just the comparative leniency of the Vietnamese that caused them to be so ’ execrated. To see the behaviour of. Vietnam in perspective, one needs to compare it with neighbouring • Cambodia

where, from 1975 until 1979, almost the whole of the former middle class; as well as the Chinese minority, ; were shot or clubbed to death. Indeed, during this period, Vietnam was actually - sheltering 300,000 refugees . from Cambodia. The Vietnamese Government said in September last - _ year that there were still in the country one-and-a-half million Vietnamese who wanted to leave, as well as a million remaining Chinese. . One must of course hope that some day the Viet- \ - namese regime will become as tolerable as, for instance, ... Poland’s or Hungary’s,, so that the old middle class no -.*i longer wishes to leave. But since that is still only a. distant prospect, one can 'I. only hope that things do not get so bad .that people are once more driven to risk their lives in escape.