THE PRESS MONDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1989. Back to Vietnam

Press, 18 December 1989, Page 12

THE PRESS MONDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1989. Back to Vietnam

The decision by Britain and Hong Kong to send Vietnamese refugees home may have been inescapable, but it is still unsavoury. The unsavoury aspects have been emphasised by some of the cant and hypocrisy in statements from several countries over the arrangement. Britain too, used hypocritical language, but other countries were as much at fault. When Britain sent back the first 51 refugees its action attracted international criticism. Yet it should be remembered that, had the rest of the world been prepared to accept the Vietnamese from Hong Kong, the whole question of forced repatriation would not have arisen. The United States has been the most outspoken critic. Its own record on taking refugees, including large numbers of Vietnamese refugees, is very good. It can thus speak with considerable credibility. Yet the United States sends back Latin Americans who slip through the border fence, and the United States chooses who it will accept as immigrants. While the United States might argue that sending people back to Mexico is not the same as sending people back to Vietnam, the United States also sends people back to Haiti where life might be as bleak for those who return as it will be for any who go back to Vietnam. United States attitudes towards Vietnam have been influential in helping to bring about the circumstances whick make people want to flee from Vietnam. Even apart from the Vietnam War, the United States has helped to prevent international aid going to Vietnam. The United States has not yet resolved what it should think officially about Vietnam.- If there is any humaneness to be sought in the forced repatriations, it should be that the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner would monitor the treatment by the Vietnamese authorities of those returning. Yet the U.N. is unwilling to get involved, largely because the biggest contributor to its funds, the United States, is strongly opposed to the forced repatriations. Vietnam itself is not the innocent victim in all this. It has agreed to take back those who fled the country and to do them no harm; but the extent to which it will look for

criminal charges against the people is not yet clear. It has agreed to accept those who are sent back, but is also accepting — perhaps exacting might be the better word — a price of SUS62O a head. Further negotiations on the price are expected. Britain and Hong Kong have the problem of dealing with the unrelenting flow of boat people. The forced repatriation of the first 51 of more than 50,000 who are in camps in Hong Kong was intended as much as a message to those planning to leave Vietnam as it was the first step in relieving the pressure on Hong Kong. There seemed to be no end to the number of people ready to face the risks of leaving Vietnam. Unhappily, Britain has used some funny language, such as “involuntary repatriation” and “a process of deportation which is used every day across the globe,” to describe what is happening. The humanitarian question is whether all the people leaving Vietnam are doing so because they fear persecution for their beliefs or for some action they have taken in the past, or whether they are economic refugees — people who believe that their chances of finding a better and iriore prosperous life are higher outside Vietnam. There is nothing wrong with the last as a motive. It was one of the motives for European settlement of New Zealand and may have been a motive for Maori settlement in New Zealand. However, immigration programmes already exist and, if the hope of bettering oneself is the motive, the appropriate approach is to seek to migrate lawfully. Deciding which people have migrated from fear of persecution and which have left for economic reasons is a difficult task. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is assisting in the screening. A danger exists in treating all those in the camps in exactly the same way. People make individual decisions to leave a country. If some patently acceptable way of determining who is a genuine refugee and who is an economic migrant can be used justly, there must be some sympathy for Britain’s desperate action in desperate circumstances.