So Much the West cared about Human Rights - Sinking the Boat People

December 9, 1989 New York Times

Sinking the Boat People

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/09/opinion/sinking-the-boat-people.html

Nothing is more unfashionable than yesterday's victims. This is the fate of more than 50,000 Vietnamese boat people now threatened with forced repatriation from refugee camps in Hong Kong. No longer ''victims of Communist tyranny,'' they are merely ''illegal immigrants,'' in the words of Prime Minister Thatcher of Britain. According to her Foreign Office, their return is not ''forced'' but ''involuntary.'' This nice distinction will bring no comfort to those about to be repatriated.

All told, 167,000 boat people have fled to Hong Kong since 1975, of whom around 112,000 have been resettled there and in other countries. Recent arrivals come mainly from Haiphong, a trip of three to seven days in fragile boats.

After accepting 10,000 Vietnamese in 1979 and 1980, Britain has found room for only hundreds each year. The United States has absorbed 50,316, but only about 800 in the last year. Meanwhile the exodus continues - 46,000 since June 1988, and hundreds more arrive every month.

There is no recent parallel for handing over so many unwilling people to a Communist state. A less recent parallel is disturbing: the forced return in 1945-46 to the Soviet bloc of hundreds of thousands of refugees, chiefly by the British. Most were killed or sent to labor camps. It was to prevent such cruelties that civilized states agreed to forbid the practice called refoulement.

In French that means forced return, a practice proscribed in article 33 of the United Nations Convention on refugees: ''No contracting state shall expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.''

According to the British, nearly all the Vietnamese have been carefully screened by the U.N. and most cannot claim a well-founded fear of persecution. That is disputed by the respected Lawyers Committee on Human Rights. It regards the screening as biased and careless and contends the refugees are helpless to contest adverse findings.

The boat people do not share Britain's faith in Hanoi's avowals of decent treatment for returnees. As of September, only 264 Vietnamese elected voluntary repatriation, despite every inducement. Imagine what Charles Dickens might say about the silky assurance of a British civil servant that returning these people is ''a process of deportation which is used every day across the globe.''

Granted, the choices are difficult. Washington initially condemned forced repatriation as ''odious'' but is opening no doors, pointing out that America has already absorbed a million or so Indochinese refugees. The Lawyers Committee urges granting the boat people permanent asylum in labor-short Hong Kong. The U.S. Committee on Refugees urges, perhaps more realistically, a one-year grace period until the world comes up with a better solution.

The U.S., Britain and other countries in the region should be struggling to find one. That would sit easier on the conscience than idly watching as 50,000 refugees are forced from their refuge.