Children a legacy of the Vietnam war

Press, 7 June 1980, Page 5

Children a legacy of the Vietnam war

By

JAMES GERRAND

NZPA Ho Chi Minh City In the evening shadows behind the central cathedral, where the girls . of what was then Saigon used to meet their American boyfriends, a woman approaches a bearded Westerner and whispers his name. Suspicious but fascinated;- the Westerner follows the graceful woman down a side street where she disappears, then returns holding the hand of a boy, aged 14. “This is my son Lee,” she says quietly. “His father was an American. Please take his hand and we will walk together as if we were a family. My name is Rosie, and thank you so much for coming to see us.” As they walk through the dimly lit alleys, Rosie tells her story, a story that appears to. be a common one in Vietnam. A dozen years ago, an American boyfriend abandoned Rosie to return to his wife and children in the United States, leaving her with a daughter, Huong. Rosie then became the companion of another American soldier and had four sons by. him before he was killed in action. Now, she says, her halfAmerican children are subject to discrimination by Vietnamese authorities, a claim that is echoed by other women with children of mixed blood, but is strongly denied by the authorities themselves. “I have many friends with children' whose fathers are American and some with Australian and New Zealand fathers,” Rosie said. “We have made a peti-' tion with a list of over 500 names of mixed children and I would like you to take it and publish it in newspapers overseas.” She produced a typewritten plea addressed to the United Nations and the United States Government, asking them to intercede with Vietnam on behalf of hundreds of children who wish to be reunited with their fathers in the West. Attached was a long list of names and addresses, with several dozen photographs of the children — their faces ranging from fair to Oriental to black. “Our children have no future in Vietnam,” said Rosie. “They are rejected and suffer every day.” She asserted that some children were not admitted to schools, that their

mothers could ru. obtain ration cards for food or jobs to earn money, and rhat their contacts with foreigners were restricted. A spokesman for the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry strongly denied that there is any official discrimination against halfAmerican children. However, with unemployment high throughout Southern Vietnam, he said ■ that local incidents of discrimination were possible. There is no way to determine how many children of mixed blood were left behind by the hundreds of thousands of United States and Allied troops and civilian workers who lived here until the Communist victory of April, 1975. The United States has given Vietnam a list of 10.500 names for family reunions under-an orderly departure programme which was agreed on almost a year ago but which has yet to begin. The Vietnamese have responded with a list of 30,000 names, almost none of which match those with American relatives.

With the orderly departure programme thus stalled, increasing numbers of half-American

children and tneir mothers have boarded small boats and joined the boat people in dangerous escapes. Rosie, as a voice for hundreds of Vietnamese mothers, pushes her crusade in the evening streets of Ho Chi Minh City. The Westerner was not the first ’. Isiting correspondent she . had approached, or whose name she mysteriously knew. 'Westerners, who once swarmed over Saigon, now stand out sharply, and their presence quickly ber comes known among the city’s half-American children, some of whom earn their living by begging near the big hotels; Groups of these children have gathered in the city’s parks to approach visiting Americans. Rosie, whose Vietnamese name is Quach Thi Huong, alsc appears to know when reporters are in town, and she has sources who tell her who they are. Although she says she has had run-ins with officials, the authorities are clearly aware of her activities and seem to tolerate them for reasons of their own.