The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current, November 29, 1978, Image 7

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THE BATTALION Page 7
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1978
Flight worth it, boat people say
United Press International
HONG KONG — If anyone is
vulnerable it is Huynh Van Hau,
who never expected to travel farther
from his farm home than the three-
mile distance to the Buddhist center
of study in the old Vietnamese impe
rial capital of Hue.
Yet here he is in Hong Kong, look-
Ship assists
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United Press International
SINGAPORE — A 380-ton ship
registered in Thailand cruises the
South China Sea looking for
Vietnamese refugees to assist them
in reaching friendly shores.
The ship, Cal Loader, is operated
by World Vision International,
(WVI) an organization with a $48
million annual budget which as
sists victims of war, floods, ear
thquakes and other disasters.
Last May, it launched Operation
Seasweep off the coast of southern
Vietnam in international waters.
Eight WVI officials were aboard the
ship, including a doctor and two
nurses.
“Our main functions are to
provide medical attention, food,
water, fuel and repairs to the engine
of the boat if necessary and to help
them live another day so they can get
to safety,” said WVI official Milton
Kohut of Los Angeles, Calif.
During Kohut’s tenure aboard the
Cal Loader, he had five encounters
with Vietnamese refugee boats.
The first one, he said, had 55 ref
ugees aboard. The Cal Loader re
paired the boat’s engine and the ref
ugees continued on their journey.
Two days later, the WVI ship
came across 21 refugees on a sinking
boat.
They were taken to Bangkok,
Thailand, and 12 were later pro
cessed for entry to the United States,
while the other nine were granted
admission to France, Kohut said.
On another occasion, the Cal
Loader found 64’ people jammed
aboard a 40-foot boat.
“They did not have a compass or a
map and were lost when we found
them. We treated 20 of the refugees
who were ill, mostly from dehydra
tion. We provided them with a com
pass, map, food and water and sent
them on their way when the engine
was fixed.
WVI s Singapore office purchased
a vessel for $3,000 and it rendez
voused with the Cal Loader 20 miles
off the coast of Malaysia. He said the
Vietnamese transferred to the ship
and “left on their own” in early Oc
tober.
The Seasweep operation has since
been suspended because of the
monsoon season but will resume in
March, Kohut said.
According to WVI officials in Sin
gapore, about half of the refugees
fleeing Vietnam have drowned or
died in the escape journey.
Kohut said WVI based the calcula
tion on what volunteers had seen and
heard from the refugees. He also said
that virtually all were fleeing in fish
ing boats which were not fit for high
seas navigation.
Kohut said he rated the chances of
survival for those not picked up by
passing boats as about 50-50.
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ing barely half his 24 years and cring
ing in his faded plumcolored monk
robes following a 1,000-mile adven
ture on heaving seas that included
two stops in China.
“They treated us well enough — in
fact they were kind and generous,”
Hau said in recalling Chinese treat
ment when his refugee boat had to
put in twice for repairs on the island
of Hainan, halfway across the South
China Sea from Hue.
“But they told me — told us -— to
take guns and go back and overthrow
the Vietnamese government in
Hanoi.”
THE CHINESE REPAIRED the
reluctant motor propelling Hau and
his 73 shipmates, then set them off to
sea with food, water and enough fuel
to get them safely to Hong Kong
waters — minus the guns.
Hau s tale is not the normal story
of the estimated 40,000 Vietnamese
“boat people who have been tossed
up on the shores of the western
Pacific all the way from Thailand to
Australia.
But it’s a recounting far from
unique.
And if he had it to do all over again,
would Buddhist monk Hau abandon
his mother, bribe authorities, steal a
boat, sneak past sentries who would
happily fill his body full of lead if
caught and then set out on an un
known sea famous for its treachery?
HAU’S ANSWER IS the same as
that of Wong Thai, a Vietnamese-
Chinese businessman from Qui
Nhon, a coastal city 240 miles south
of Hue.
“It was worth risking death to es
cape,” said the middleaged former
businessman. “If I were given the
choice of execution or returning to
the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, I
would ask to be executed.
Wong fled Vietnam aboard a boat
with 171 other ethnic Chinese.
“My Vietnamese friends who were
in business took the same road as I
did. They had to close their shops.”
He shrugged. “It’s the communist
way.
WHETHER THEY HAVE
learned the lesson from risking
prison by surreptitiously listening to
the Voice of America (VOA) or
British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC)
broadcasts, the “boat people” all tell
dubious authorities when they step
on the non-communist shores of
Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Hong Kong, Macao or Australia:
“We are fleeing communism. We
cannot live under communism. Our
lives would be in danger.
Those are the magic words,
whether they know it or not, that are
the open sesame to temporary
asylum until they are granted per
manent refuge in the United States,
Canada, Australia, or France.
One of the refugees on the nearby
Portugese enclave of Macao claims
that at least to his sensitive office in
Ho Chi Minh City, it was a matter of
economics what happened to people
in the former South Vietnamese cap
ital known previously as Saigon.
LE TRONG WORKED in the
dreaded Central Office of Registry
for New Economic Zones, known af
fectionately among the refugees as
the “concentration camp farms.”
Trong decided who went and who
stayed in the city.
“If they had enough money to
bribe me or other officials who had
influence with me, I put them on the
list of ‘needed personnel’ (exempt
from breaking new earth in virgin
land) — they could stay in the city.”
If he had earned all that money (he
never said how much) in bribes, why
did Trong leave? “The new cadres
were not only Northerners, he said.
“They were communists and neither
one will leave us southerners alone.
Trong’s reaction is typical of a
Vietnamese clannishness that is
exacerbated when Vietnamese from
different regions or different reli
gions are cast together in the seaside
camps in Thailand, or the cramped
hotel rooms where many of them are
housed in Hong Kong.
Refugee flow increases
Resettlement quotas raised
United Press International
BANGKOK, Thailand — Refugee
resettlement programs in Thailand
are finally working more smoothly,
quotas have been raised and local
resettlement is being planned.
Meanwhile, over 20,000 refugees
have landed in Australia in the past
three years, and officials there say
most have been given resident
status.
The problem in Thailand, how
ever, remains that more Indochinese
refugees are coming into Bangkok
than going out.
A representative of the United Na
tions High Commissioner of Ref
ugees said the number of refugees
registered in Thai camps reached
116,534 by the end of September, up
more than 1,000 over the previous
month.
THE UNHCR OFFICIAL called
it “one of our better months. He
said about 2,000 refugees left for re
settlement in ihird countries, but
more than 3,100 new refugees were
registered.
A brutal regime in communist
Cambodia and uncompromising
socialist transformation in Vietnam
have added to the flow. But most of
Thailand’s refugees come from tiny
neighboring Laos.
More than 98,000 Laotian ref
ugees are living in Thai refugee
camps and thousands more are be
lieved to be living illegally outside
the camps in the Thai countryside.
WITH A DROUGHT last year
and widespread floods this year add
ing to serious food shortages, the
flow of refugees has steadily in
creased.
Refugee resettlement programs at
the French, Australian and United
States embassies have ironed out
some of the bureaucratic hugs that
have plagued them over the past
three years. Movement abroad,
especially for Vietnamese boat
people, is fairly quick.
Many of the 15,011 Cambodians
registered in the camps have stuck
there for over three years, hoping for
speedier action once a proposed
U.S. quota of 7,000 Cambodians per
year is approved by President Car
ter.
Canada recently announced a new
program aimed at the neglected
Cambodians, but it is limited to 20
families per month.
SOME WESTERN COUN
TRIES and the UNHCR have been
urging Thailand to permanently re
settle some of the refugees in Thai
land. But the Thai government, with
a large, land-poor population of na
tive Thais in the couhtryside, is wary
of the political consequences of aid
ing and resettling Laotians, Camho-
diahs and Vietnamese while its own
people go unhelped.
At first the refugee problem was
somewhat embarrassing to the Aus
tralian government because some of
the vessels got within a few miles of
Darwin harbor before being de
tected.
Since then, however, their route
has become almost standardized.
The refugees are almost invariably
accepted and given temporary entry
status pending checks on their back
grounds.
ALTHOUGH ABOUT 8,000 are
still in government-operated hostels
in various cities, others have made
their own homes in both urban and
country areas and have been assimi
lated into the community. Most have
been given resident status in Austra
lia.
Immigration Minister Michael
Mackellar said many Australians feel
the boat people should he turned
away. “But what would happen to
Australia s good name if we did turn
hack one of these boats and it sank?
And what would we be condemning
refugees to when we send them back
to the places from which they fled?”
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