Little compassion left for boat people in HK

In the fourth of his occasional series of Letters from East Asia, our correspondent Harvey Stockwin reflects on the many- sided problem of the boat people, and how hostile Hong Kong Chinese have become to fellow Chinese from Vietnam.

HONG KONG (JP): The riot on May 10 here, when 3,000 Vietnamese confined at the Whitehead Detention Center in the New Territories burned down much of the camp, was the worst on recent record. Two thousand policemen were required to restore something resembling order.

Behind the flames, tear gas, and 43 burned vehicles, plus the breakout of 119 Vietnamese, not all of whom have yet been recaptured, lay a complex, still unfolding tragedy.

For a start, the riot was a reminder that, both in Hong Kong and in Southeast Asia generally, the massive exodus of "boat people" from Vietnam eventually dried up the well of human compassion.

Essentially, the flow of humanity was simply too large and too protracted. Since 1975, 196,126 boat people have sought to escape from Vietnam via Hong Kong.

In part, the flow was protracted because western nations in particular made no initial effort to accommodate it, as Vietnamese took to their boats in reaction to the 1975 communist takeover.

That stance had the inevitable dual effect of both increasing the number of Vietnamese refugees, while reducing the willingness of third countries to accommodate them. The Sino-Vietnamese border war in 1979 further increased the supply of refugees, as a large percentage of Vietnam's Chinese minority were encouraged to depart in its wake.

The ensuing additional demand for acceptance in the West was more than those nations were willing to contemplate.

Reluctantly or willingly, Southeast Asian countries had allowed themselves to become the "ports of first asylum" for the Vietnamese "boat people". They set up many, sometimes huge, camps in the expectation that they would be transitory affairs, and that the refugee burden would not endure.

But as the flow continued and the placements diminished, what were founded as temporary camps looked likely to become well-nigh permanent. An additional hazard was that wealthy nations like the United States were not regularly paying all of their United Nations dues. So, while the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) managed the camps, regional governments ended up paying too many of the refugee bills. Hong Kong is, for example, owed well over HK$ 1 billion (US$128 million) by the UNHCR.

The ever increasing lack of generosity in Hong Kong for the boat people was both understandable and deplorable. Hong Kong Chinese have too quickly forgotten that Hong Kong itself prospered by welcoming refugees, mainly from China. Hong Kong Chinese also seem to forget that they, too, will probably be looking for placement in foreign countries if -- as seems increasingly likely -- life under Chinese communist rule turns out to be unbearably harsh. Many have not waited for the 1997 takeover by China, but have sought foreign passports already.

The antipathy here towards the Vietnamese has long been based on dubious logic. The continued exodus of boat people, it was often said, was mere economic opportunism. The fact that someone leaving a country for economic reasons is also making a political statement was conveniently glossed over.

An equally dubious process was set in motion whereby the Vietnamese were "screened" to discover whether they were genuine political refugees or not. The process achieved the desired result -- most were found to be "economic migrants" who should be deported in the same way as illegal immigrants usually are.

What seemed to justify this logic was the undoubted fact that once Southeast Asian nations began to forcibly repatriate Vietnamese, the flow of "boat people" would dry up very quickly.

Undoubtedly, too, a factor in the refugee equation was that a minority of the Vietnamese refugees in the camps displayed the same toughness which won the war against the Americans, being all too willing to respond violently to any perceived slights or ill treatment. The recent riot here was only the worst example of the refugees biting the hand that fed them. For years, Vietnamese youths have been renowned here for their ability to create hand- made weapons out of the limited materials available to them in camps, and their willingness to use them too -- not least on their fellow refugees, as well as on their warders.

Some of the Vietnamese who broke out of Whitehead camp on May 10 were fleeing from their own people as well as from detention.

But the larger picture was that of desperation driving the refugees to burn and break out of their camp -- thereby making their unwilling Hong Kong hosts even more desperate to get rid of them.

Here in Hong Kong, the Chinese antagonism for the ethnic Vietnamese is understandable in historical and ethnic terms. The two peoples have long detested each other.

Thus, the Vietnamese Chinese were truly caught in the middle. On the one hand, they were on the receiving end of Vietnamese Sinophobia in Vietnam, forcing them to flee their homes. On the other hand, as refugees in Hong Kong, they were on the receiving end of Chinese Vietphobia. Hong Kong Chinese usually failed to distinguish between fleeing ethnic Vietnamese and fleeing Vietnamese Chinese. This was true even when the Chinese from Vietnam were Cantonese -- just like the inhabitants of Hong Kong.

Yet the Hong Kong attitude towards the boat people was understandable in another way. From the early 1980s onwards, Hong Kong abandoned its former policy of allowing all refugees from China to stay, providing they were not actually caught crossing the border. A policy was instituted whereby the former "refugees" became "illegal immigrants" from China, who, when caught, were sent back to China within 24 hours. This change was made at the very time when the Vietnamese "illegal immigrants" were being allowed to stay.

So the harsh treatment of Vietnamese in secluded camps, the hasty and unfair process of screening, and the whole messy business of forcible repatriation were meant to make the treatment of illegal immigrants more balanced, so to speak.

The latest complicated development suggests some former Vietnamese Chinese may be detained in camps here for the rest of their lives.

Some 270 Vietnamese Chinese, claiming Taiwan ancestry, sought an end to their indefinite detention because Vietnam refuses to accept them, thereby preventing their forcible deportation. Taipei declines to accept them.

Recently, the Privy Council in London ruled in their favor saying that they should not be detained but should instead be released into the community. The 270 were freed as a consequence.

Now the Hong Kong government, under intense pressure from the community, has sought to plug this loophole by passing, on May 22, a controversial new law giving the government greater powers of detention over the 5,000 Vietnamese already in camps in Hong Kong, whom Hanoi and Taipei have also so far refused to accept, but whom the Privy Council ruling might yet set free. Hong Kong, a great city built by refugees with refugees for refugees, has gone a long way towards forgetting its roots.