Vietnamese boat people (Vietnamese: Thuyền nhân Việt Nam) were refugees who fled Vietnam by sea following the 1975 fall of Saigon, which marked the end of the Vietnam War. This migration and humanitarian crisis peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s before continuing into the 1990s. Between 1975 and 1995, almost 800,000 boat people arrived safely in other countries, while many others died at sea due to piracy, overcrowding, and storms. Political repression, re-education camps and the expropriation of Hoa properties by the Vietnamese government, economic hardship, and conflicts such as the Third Indochina War, contributed to the wider Indochina refugee crisis.
Tensions between Vietnam and China in 1978 and 1979 contributed to the departure of large numbers of ethnic Hoa people from Vietnam, many of whom fled by boat. Anti-Chinese sentiment and regional conflict further accelerated this exodus. The number of people who died is hard to establish because of the lack of reliable data and the political instrumentalization of the topic. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that between 200,000 and 250,000 boat people died at sea. In 1981, Australian journalist Barry Wain put forward a figure of 30,000 people dead at sea.
The boat people's first destinations were Hong Kong and the Southeast Asian locations of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. Southeast Asian countries grew increasingly unwilling to accept additional arrivals. Following negotiations and an international conference in 1979, Vietnam agreed to limit departures. Southeast Asian countries agreed to grant temporary asylum, while more developed countries assumed most resettlement responsibilities and costs. Consequently, from refugee camps in Southeast Asia, the great majority of boat people were resettled in the United States, Canada, Italy, Australia, France, West Germany, and the United Kingdom. Several tens of thousands were repatriated to Vietnam. The UNHCR coordinated initiatives such as the Orderly Departure Program, the Philippine Refugee Processing Center, and the Comprehensive Plan of Action to facilitate resettlement.
Background
The Vietnam War ended on 30 April 1975, with the fall of Saigon to the People's Army of Vietnam and the subsequent evacuation of more than 130,000 Vietnamese closely associated with the United States or the former government of South Vietnam. Most of the evacuees were resettled in the United States in Operation New Life and Operation New Arrivals. The U.S. government transported refugees from Vietnam via aircraft and ships to temporarily settle down in Guam before moving them to designated homes in the contiguous United States. Within the same year, communist forces gained control of Cambodia and Laos, thus engendering a steady flow of refugees fleeing all three countries. In 1975, President Gerald Ford signed the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act, budgeting roughly 455 million dollars in the effort to provide transportation, healthcare, and accommodations to the 130,000 Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Lao refugees.
After the Saigon evacuation, the number of Vietnamese leaving their country remained relatively small until mid-1978. A number of factors contributed to the refugee crisis, including economic hardship and wars in Vietnam, China, and Cambodia. In addition, up to 300,000 people, especially those associated with the former government and military of South Vietnam, were sent to re-education camps, where many endured torture, starvation, and disease while being forced to perform hard labor. In addition, 1 million people, mostly city dwellers, "volunteered" to live in "New Economic Zones" where they were to survive by reclaiming land and clearing jungle to grow crops.
Repression was especially severe on the Hoa people, the ethnic Chinese population in Vietnam. Due to increasing tensions between Vietnam and China, which ultimately resulted in China's 1979 invasion of Vietnam, the Hoa were seen by the Vietnamese government as a security threat. Hoa people also controlled much of the retail trade in South Vietnam, and the communist government increasingly levied them with taxes, placed restrictions on trade, and confiscated businesses. In May 1978, the Hoa began to leave Vietnam in large numbers for China, initially by land. By the end of 1979, resulting from the Sino-Vietnamese War, 250,000 Hoa had sought refuge in China and many tens of thousands more were among the Vietnamese boat people scattered all over Southeast Asia and in Hong Kong.
The Vietnamese government and its officials profited from the outflow of refugees, especially the often well-to-do Hoa. The price for obtaining exit permits, documentation, and a boat or ship, often derelict, to leave Vietnam was reported to be the equivalent of $3,000 for adults and half that for children. These payments were often made in the form of gold bars. Many poorer Vietnamese left their country secretly without documentation and in flimsy boats, and these were the most vulnerable to pirates and storms while at sea.
There were many methods employed by Vietnamese citizens to leave the country. Most were secret and done at night; some involved the bribing of top government officials. Some people bought places in large boats that hold up to several hundred passengers. Others boarded fishing boats (fishing being a common occupation in Vietnam) and left that way. One method used involved middle-class refugees from Saigon, armed with forged identity documents, traveling approximately 1,100 kilometres (680 mi) to Da Nang by road. On arrival, they would take refuge for up to two days in safe houses while waiting for fishing junks and trawlers to take small groups into international waters. Planning for such a trip took many months and even years. Although these attempts often caused a depletion of resources, people often had false starts before they managed to escape.
Exodus in 1978–1979
Although a few thousand people had fled Vietnam by boat between 1975 and mid-1978, the exodus of the boat people began in September 1978. The vessel Southern Cross unloaded 1,200 Vietnamese on an uninhabited island belonging to Indonesia. The government of Indonesia was furious at the people being dumped on its shores, but was pacified by the assurances of Western countries that they would resettle the refugees. In October 1978, another ship, the Hai Hong, attempted to land 2,500 refugees in Malaysia. The Malaysians declined to allow them to enter their territory and the ship sat offshore until the refugees were processed for resettlement in third countries. More large ships carrying thousands of refugees began to arrive in Hong Kong territorial waters: the Huey Fong in December 1978 (3,318 refugees), the Skyluck, disguised as the Kylu, in February 1979 (2,651 refugees), and the Seng Cheong, disguised as the Sen On, in May (1,433 refugees). Their passengers were both ethnic Vietnamese and Hoa who had paid substantial fares for the passage.
As these larger ships met resistance to landing their human cargo, many thousands of Vietnamese began to depart Vietnam in small boats, attempting to land surreptitiously on the shores of neighbouring countries. The people in these small boats faced enormous dangers at sea and many thousands of them did not survive the voyage. The countries of the region often "pushed back" the boats when they arrived near their coastline and boat people cast about at sea for weeks or months looking for a place where they could land. Despite the dangers and the resistance of the receiving countries, the number of boat people continued to grow, reaching a high of 54,000 arrivals in the month of June 1979, with a total of 350,000 in refugee camps in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. At this point, the countries of Southeast Asia united in declaring that they had "reached the limit of their endurance and decided that they would not accept any new arrivals".
The United Nations convened an international conference in Geneva, Switzerland in July 1979, stating that "a grave crisis exists in Southeast Asia for hundreds of thousands of refugees". Illustrating the prominence of the issue, Vice President Walter Mondale headed the U.S. delegation. The results of the conference were that the Southeast Asian countries agreed to provide temporary asylum to the refugees, Vietnam agreed to promote orderly departures rather than permit boat people to depart, and the Western countries agreed to accelerate resettlement. The Orderly Departure Program enabled Vietnamese, if approved, to depart Vietnam for resettlement in another country without having to become a boat person. As a result of the conference, boat people departures from Vietnam declined to a few thousand per month and resettlements increased from 9,000 per month in early 1979 to 25,000 per month, the majority of the Vietnamese going to the United States, France, Australia, and Canada. The worst of the humanitarian crisis was over, although boat people would continue to leave Vietnam for more than another decade and die at sea or be confined to lengthy stays in refugee camps.
Pirates and other hazards
Boat people had to face storms, diseases, starvation, and elude pirates. The boats were not intended for navigating open waters, and would typically head for busy international shipping lanes some 240 kilometres (150 mi) to the east. Additionally, these boats were especially vulnerable due to the lack of weapons to defend themselves as it was difficult to obtain unauthorized weapons in Vietnam at the time. Before 1983 around 20% of boat people were rescued by freighters, but that percentage declined the following years. These lucky ones would reach shore 1–2 weeks after departure. The unlucky ones continued their perilous journey at sea, sometimes lasting a few months long, suffering from hunger, thirst, disease, theft and more attacks before finding safety.
A typical story of the hazards faced by the boat people was told in 1982 by a man named Le Phuoc. He left Vietnam with 17 other people in a boat 23 feet (7.0 m) long to attempt the 300-mile (480 km) passage across the Gulf of Thailand to southern Thailand or Malaysia. Their two outboard motors soon failed and they drifted without power and ran out of food and water. Thai pirates boarded their boat three times during their 17-day voyage, raped the four women on board and killed one, stole all the possessions of the refugees, and abducted one man who was never found. When their boat sank, they were rescued by a Thai fishing boat and ended up in a refugee camp on the coast of Thailand. Another of many stories tell of a boat carrying 75 refugees which were sunk by pirates with one person surviving. The survivors of another boat in which most of the 21 women aboard were abducted by pirates said that at least 50 merchant vessels passed them by and ignored their pleas for help. An Argentine freighter finally picked them up and took them to Thailand.
As attacks such as these became common some have linked the rise in piracy with neighboring countries' desire to keep refugees out. The 1979 ASEAN announcement essentially declared there would be no official protections offered by neighboring governments. In this way the known threat of piracy was being used as a tool of state policy. Throughout time, professional pirates operating together replaced lone fishermen in Southeast Asian piracy. Piracy in the Gulf of Thailand swiftly developed into a highly coordinated industry, with multiple fishing vessels encircling and assaulting a refugee craft in coordinated attacks.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) began compiling statistics on piracy in 1981. In that year, 452 boats carrying Vietnamese boat people arrived in Thailand carrying 15,479 refugees; 349 of the boats had been attacked by pirates an average of three times each, while 228 women had been abducted and 881 people were dead or missing. An international anti-piracy campaign known as the Anti-Piracy Arrangement began in June 1982 and was made up of Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States with a total funding of £3.6 million. In the first year of the program the number of recorded piracy attacks dropped 67%, and continued to fall until a deadly resurgence of piracy in 1988 and 1989, just before the end of the Hoa exodus.
According to author Nghia M. Vo and the UNHCR, between 200,000 and 250,000 boat people died at sea.
Refugee camps
In response to the outpouring of boat people, the neighbouring countries with international assistance set up refugee camps along their shores and on small, isolated islands. As the number of boat people grew to tens of thousands per month in early 1979, their numbers outstripped the ability of local governments, the UN, and humanitarian organizations to provide food, water, housing, and medical care to them. Two of the largest refugee camps were Bidong Island in Malaysia and Galang Refugee Camp in Indonesia.
In response to the increasing numbers of refugees pouring in following the results of the Vietnam War the Malaysian island, Pulao Bidong, was transformed in into a refugee camp by the Malaysian government and the Red Crescent Society. Bidong Island was designated as the principal refugee camp in Malaysia in August 1978. The Malaysian government towed any arriving boatloads of refugees to the island. Less than one square mile in area, Bidong was prepared to receive 4,500 refugees, but by June 1979 Bidong had a refugee population of more than 40,000 who had arrived in 453 boats. While Malaysia was crucial in providing help and support to refugees entering their shores, many other countries provided refuge, such as Japan, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, and the United States.