Sơn Trung Thư Trang: ABSOLUTE ASTRONOMY

Friday, March 20, 2009

ABSOLUTE ASTRONOMY

BOAT PEOPLE
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Boat people is a term (usually) referring to illegal immigrants or asylum seekers who arrive en masse in old or crudely-made boat

Boat

A boat is a structure designed to float on water coupled with a system of propulsion, such as a Propeller, oars, paddles, a setting pole, a sail, Paddle steamer or a pump-jet....
s. The term came into common use during the late 1970s with the mass departure of Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, is a country in Southeast Asia. Situated in eastern Indochinabordering China, Laos, Cambodia, as well as the South China Seait is the most populous country among the mainland Southeas...
ese refugees from communist-controlled Vietnam, following the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a conflict in which the North Vietnam and its allies fought against the South Vietnam and its allies ....
.

It is also a widely used form of migration

Emigration

Emigration is the act and the phenomenon of leaving one's native country to Settler abroad. It is the same as immigration but from the perspective of the country of origin....
or escape for people migrating from Cuba

Cuba

Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, consists of the island of Cuba, the Isle of Youth and adjacent small islands....
(often under the Cuban Adjustment Act or Wet-foot, Dry-foot policy

Wet feet, dry feet policy

The wet feet, dry feet policy is the name given to a consequence of the 1995 revision of the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 that says, essentially, that anyone who fled Cuba and got into the United States would be allowed to pursue residency a ye...
), Haiti

Haiti

Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti, occupies one third of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, and also includes many smaller islands such as Gonve Island, La Tortue , Les Cayemites, le de Anacaona, and La Grande Caye....
, Dominican Republic

Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic, is a country located on the eastern two-thirds of the Caribbean Sea island of Hispaniola, bordering Haiti....
(*), Morocco

Morocco

The Kingdom of Morocco is a country in North Africa. It has a long coastline on the Atlantic Ocean that reaches past the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea....
, Vietnam

Vietnam

Albania

The Republic of Albania is a Balkan country in Southeastern Europe. It borders Montenegro to the north, the southern Serbian province of Kosovo in the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia in the east, and Greece in the south....
. They often risk their lives on dangerously crude and overcrowded boats, to escape oppression or poverty

Poverty

Poverty is understood in many senses. The main understandings of the term include:*Descriptions of material need, typically including the necessities of daily living, like ....
in their home nations. In 2001, 353 asylum-seekers sailing from Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a island nation consisting of 18,110 islands in the South East Asia....
to Australia

Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the world's smallest continent and a number of islands in the Southern Ocean, Indian Ocean, and Pacific Oceans....
drowned when their vessel sank. Many of the political refugees have also been attacked by pirates on the high seas or upon isolated islands, or have been turned away by unsympathetic governments and forced to return.

Boat people are frequently a source of controversy in the nation they seek to immigrate to, such as the United States

United States

The United States of America, also known as the United States, the U.S., the U.S.A., and America, is a country in North America....
, Canada

Canada

Canada is the world's List of countries by area country by total area, occupying most of northern North America....
, Italy

Italy

Italy, officially the Italian Republic , is a Southern European country. It comprises the Po River valley, the Italian Peninsula and the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
, Spain

Spain

Spain, officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a European parliamentary monarchy. It is the largest of the three sovereign nations that make up the Iberian Peninsula—the others are Portugal and Andorra—located in Southern Europe....
and Australia. Boat people are often forcibly prevented from landing at their destination, such as under Australia's "Pacific Solution

Pacific Solution

The Pacific Solution was the name given to the Australian government policy of diverting asylum seekers to detention camps on small island nations in the Pacific Ocean, rather than allowing them to land on the Australia mainland....
", or they are subjected to mandatory detention

Mandatory detention

Mandatory detention is the practice of compulsorily detaining or prison people seeking political asylum, or who are considered to be illegal immigration or unauthorised arrivals into a country....
after their arrival. Unlike the wave of Vietnamese boat people in the 1970s and early 1980s, most boat people arriving in Western countries, Australia or the USA have purchased their passage on large and overcrowded sea-worthy boats.

Vietnamese boat people

Events resulting from the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a conflict in which the North Vietnam and its allies fought against the South Vietnam and its allies ....
led many people in Cambodia

Cambodia

The Kingdom of Cambodia is a country in Southeast Asia with a population of more than 13 million....
, Laos

Laos

Laos, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked socialist republic communist state in southeast Asia, bordered by Myanmar and the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the so...
, and especially Vietnam to become refugees in the late 1970s and 1980s, after the fall of Saigon

Fall of Saigon

The Fall/Liberation of Saigon, was the capture of the South Vietnamese capital of Ho Chi Minh City by the Vietnam People's Army on April 30, 1975....
. In Vietnam, the new communist government sent many people who supported the old government in the South to "re-education camps", and others to "new economic zones." An estimated 1 million people were imprisoned without formal charges or trials. 165,000 people died in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's re-education camps, according to published academic studies in the United States and Europe. Thousands were abused or tortured: their hands and legs shackled in painful positions for months, their skin slashed by bamboo canes studded with thorns, their veins injected with poisonous chemicals, their spirits broken with stories about relatives being killed. These factors, coupled with poverty, caused hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese to flee the country. In 1979, Vietnam was at war (Sino-Vietnamese War

Sino-Vietnamese War

The Sino-Vietnamese War or Third Indochina Wars was a war fought in 1979 between the neighboring countries of the People's Republic of China and Vietnam....
) with the People's Republic of China

People's Republic of China

The People's Republic of China , is a country in East Asia. The PRC has a coastline of 14,500 kilometres , and borders Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, India, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia, a...
(PRC), and many ethnic Chinese

Hoa

The Hoa are an overseas Chinese race ethnic minority in Vietnam. They are also typically referred to as either Chinese Vietnamese, Vietnamese Chinese, Sino-Vietnamese, or ethnic Chinese in/from Vietnam....
living in Vietnam, who felt that the government's policies directly targeted them also became "boat people." On the open seas, the boat people had to confront forces of nature, and elude pirates

Piracy

Piracy is robbery committed at sea, or sometimes on the shore, by an agent without a commission from a sovereignty nation....
. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge

Khmer Rouge

The Khmer Rouge was the extremist-Communist organization that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979....
regime murdered millions of people in the "Killing Fields" massacres, and many attempted to escape.

Escape route

There were many different ways people used to leave the country. Most were secretive; some involved the bribing of officials. Some people bought places in large boats that held 400 passengers. Others organized smaller groups . Many families were split up during this period because they could only afford to send off one or a few members of the family. One method saw would-be middle-class refugees from Saigon, armed with forged identity documents, travel 1,100 km to Danang 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, even years. Although these attempts often depleted resources, people often had several false starts before they managed to escape.

The boats, most usually not intended for navigating open waters, would typically head for busy international shipping lanes some 240 km to the east. The lucky ones would succeed in being rescued by freighters and taken to Hong Kong, some 2,200 km away. Others landed on the shores of Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. The unlucky ones would face a two-week long or even 6 month perilous journey in rickety craft; stopping every now and again in Chinese shores, suffering hunger and thirst.

Refugee camps

The plight of the boat people became an international humanitarian crisis. There were untold miseries, rapes and murders on the South China Sea

South China Sea

The South China Sea is a marginal sea south of China. It is a part of the Pacific Ocean, encompassing an area from Singapore to the Strait of Taiwan of around 3,500,000 km....
committed byThai

Thai people

This article is about Thailand's ethnic majority. For other Tai ethnic groups, see Tai peoples.The Thai are the main ethnic group of Thailand and are part of the larger Tai ethnic group found in Thailand and adjacent countries in Southeast As...
pirates who preyed on the refugees who had sold all their possessions and carried gold with them on the trips. The UNHCR, under the auspices of the United Nations

United Nations

name = United Nations'Nations UniesNaciones Unidas'|image=Flag of the United Nations.svg...
, set up refugee camps in neighbouring countries to process the "boat people". They got the 1981 Nobel Peace Prize

Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of five Nobel Prizes bequested by the Sweden industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel....
for this.

Camps were set up in Malaysia

Malaysia

Malaysia is a federation of States of Malaysia in Southeast Asia, formed in 1963.The country consists of two geographical regions divided by the South China Sea:...
, Thailand

Thailand

The Kingdom of Thailand is a country in Southeast Asia, bordering Laos and Cambodia to the east, the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia to the south, and the Andaman Sea and Myanmar to the west....
, the Philippines

Philippines

The Philippines , officially the Republic of the Philippines , is an island nation located in the Malay archipelago in Southeast Asia, with Manila as its capital....
, Hong Kong

Hong Kong

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China is one of the two special administrative region of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau....
, and Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a island nation consisting of 18,110 islands in the South East Asia....
. According to stories told by the Vietnamese refugees, the conditions at the camps were bad. Not much of the generous aid

AID

AID may refer to:*Activation-Induced Deaminase, an enzyme*Algebraic Interpretive Dialogue, an implementation of JOSS II for the PDP-10...
money actually got to the refugees. And in particular, refugees at Thai camps were maltreated and many were brutally bullied by the Thai guards. Most of the refugees came from the former South Vietnam

South Vietnam

South Vietnam is the commonly used name for the former Vietnamese country that existed from 1954 to 1976 in the portion of Vietnam that lay south of the Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone....
. However, soon after the first wave between 1975-1978, North Vietnam

North Vietnam

The Democratic Republic of Vietnam , or less commonly, Vietnamese Democratic Republic , also known as North Vietnam, was proclaimed by Ho Chi Minh in Hn?i on September 2, 1945 as a provisional government....
ese from seaside cities such as Haiphong

Haiphong

Haiphong is the third most populous city in Vietnam.GeographyHaiphong is located in the delta of the Red River....
started to escape and land in Hong Kong. Among them were genuine ethnically Chinese Vietnamese refugees who escaped from Vietnam and headed to China

China

China is a Culture of China and ancient civilization in East Asia. Due to the stalemate of the last Chinese Civil War following World War II, the word "China" is used today by two de facto separate states: the People's Republic of China and...
and the city of Hong Kong.

One forgotten group of Vietnamese boat people were those who escaped by land across the Cambodian and Thailand border. They did not travel by boat, but they ended up at the same camps just like those who braved the seas. The Orderly Departure Program

Orderly Departure Program

The 'Orderly Departure Program' was a program to permit immigration of Vietnamese refugees to the United States of America, instituted in 1979 under the auspices of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees....
from 1979 until 1994 was one such program that helped to resettle refugees in the United States. In this program, refugees were asked to go back to Vietnam and waited for assessment. If they were deemed to be eligible to be re-settled in the US according to the criteria the US government had established, they would be allowed to migrate to the USA. After ODP, there was another program called Humanitarian Operation. In this program, many former Southern Vietnamese who were involved in the former regime or working for the US would be allowed to migrate to the US provided that they had suffered harsh persecutions by the communist regime after 1975. Also the half-American children in Vietnam also allowed to migrate along with their mothers or foster parents. This also sparked a feverish wave of rich Vietnamese parents buying the right from the real mothers or foster parents. They paid money (in the black market) to transfer the half-American children into their custody, then applied for visa to migrate to the USA. Most of these half-American children were born of American soldiers and illiterate prostitutes. They were subject of discrimination, poverty, neglects and abuse. It was a big headache for the US to accept and deal with these children that the Vietnamese government were glad to be rid of. The United States and Vietnam signed an agreement on November 15, 2005, which allows those Vietnamese to immigrate who were not able to do so before the humanitarian operation program ended in 1994. Effectively this new agreement was the extension and also final chapter of the HO program.

Hong Kong adopted the "port of first asylum policy," and received over 100,000 of them in the city at its peak in the late 1980s. Many refugee camps were set up in its territories. Frequent violent clashes between the boat people and security forces caused public outcry and mounting concerns in the early 1990s since many camps are very close to high-density residential areas.

For Australia, there was a major policy shift by the Fraser government, which abolished the White Australia policy

White Australia policy

The White Australia Policy is the prevailing term used to describe a collection of racist Australia policy which restricted non-white immigration and promoted white, European immigration from 1830 to 1973 with related policies enduring as late...
by letting over 100,000 Vietnamese refugees in such a quick pace. The countries that accepted most of these refugees were:

United States
United States

The United States of America, also known as the United States, the U.S., the U.S.A., and America, is a country in North America....
- 823,000
Australia and Canada - 137,000 each
France
France

France, officially the French Republic, is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and which also comprises various overseas islands and territories located in other regions.For more information, see ....
- 96,000
Germany
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea, to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic, to the south by Austria and Sw...
and UK
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a country and state that lies off the northwest coast of mainland Europe Europe....
- 19,000 each
Italy
Italy

Italy, officially the Italian Republic , is a Southern European country. It comprises the Po River valley, the Italian Peninsula and the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
Israel
Israel

Israel , officially the State of Israel, is a country in Southwest Asia on the southeastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea....
400

By late 1980s, Western Europe, the United States and Australia received fewer Vietnamese refugees . It became much harder to get visa

Visa (document)

A visa is a document issued by a country giving a certain individual permission to formally request entrance to the country during a given period of time and for certain purposes....
s to settle in these countries. The refugees faced prospects of staying years in the camps and ultimate repatriation

Repatriation

Repatriation is a term used to describe the process of return of Refugee or soldiers to their homes, most notably following a war....
back to Vietnam. They were branded, rightly or wrongly, as economic refugee

Refugee

A refugee is a person seeking asylum in a foreign country in order to escape persecution, war, terrorism, extreme poverty, famines, or natural disaster....
s. By the mid-1990s, the number of refugees fleeing from Vietnam had dwindled. Many refugee camps were closed. Most of the well educated or those with genuine refugee status had already been accepted by receiving countries.

There were some unwritten rules in the mind of immigration officials from Western countries. They preferred to accept married couples, young families and women over 18 years old, leaving single men and minors to languish at the camps for years. Among these unwanted, those who worked and studied hard and involved themselves in constructive refugee community activities were eventually accepted by the West by recommendations from UNHCR workers. Hong Kong was open about its willingness to take the remnants at its camp, but only some refugees took up the offer. Many refugees would have been accepted by Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, but hardly any wanted to settle in these countries.

The market reforms of Vietnam, the imminent return of Hong Kong to China by Britain and the financial incentives for voluntary returning to Vietnam caused many boat people to elect to return to Vietnam during the 1990s. Consequently, most remaining asylum seekers were voluntarily or forcibly repatriated to Vietnam, although a very small number (about 2,500) were granted residency by the Hong Kong Government in 2002, marking an end to the Vietnam boat people history. In 2005, the remaining refugees in the Philippines (around 200) were granted asylum in Canada, Norway and the United States.

A parody variation of the term "yacht people" has been applied to affluent Chinese immigrating to Canada and the United States from Hong Kong and other locations.

Films

Boat People (1982 film) is a 1982 fictional film by Hong Kong director Ann Hui
Ann Hui

Ann Hui On-Wah born May 23, 1947 to a Han Chinese father and a Japanese people mother is a Hong Kong film director, one of the most critically acclaimed amongst the Hong Kong New Wave....
about the fate of a group of boat people, as seen through the eyes of a Japanese journalist.
Green Dragon, a 2001 film by the Vietnamese American director Timothy Linh Bui
Timothy Linh Bui

Timothy Linh Bui is a Vietnamese-born American filmmaker, film producer, and screenwriter. He directed Green Dragon , and co-wrote and produced Three Seasons....
, depicts the lives and struggles of Vietnamese refugees at Camp Pendleton following the Fall of Saigon.
Journey from the Fall
Journey from the Fall

Journey from the Fall is an Independent film by writer/director/editor Ham Tran, about the Vietnamese people reeducation camp and boat people experience following the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975....
is an independent movie by writer/director/editor Ham Tran
Ham Tran

Ham Tran is a Vietnamese American film screenwriter/film editing/Film director, of Hoa ancestry....
in 2005, about the Vietnamese
Vietnamese people

The Vietnamese people are an ethnic group originating from what is now northern Vietnam and southern China....
refugee camp and boat people
Boat people

It is also a widely used form of migration or escape for people migrating from Cuba, Haiti, Morocco, Vietnam or Albania....
experience following the Fall of Saigon
Fall of Saigon

The Fall/Liberation of Saigon, was the capture of the South Vietnamese capital of Ho Chi Minh City by the Vietnam People's Army on April 30, 1975....
on April 30th, 1975.
Bolinao 52
Bolinao 52

Bolinao 52 is a Documentary film by Vietnamese American director Duc Nguyen about the Vietnamese boat people ship that was originally stranded in the Pacific Ocean in 1988....
is a documentary in 2007 by Vietnamese American director Duc Nguyen about the Vietnamese boat people ship that was originally stranded in the Pacific Ocean in 1988.

External links

The Canadian Museum of Civilization - Boat People No Longer
Boat people - a refugee crisis: CBC Archives footage
Flight from Indochina: from UNHCR
Boat People S.O.S
The boat people: Imprints on history, by Lloyd Duong PDF
Archive of Vietnamese Boatpeople
Website of a Vietnamese Boat People
Oral History Interviews with 15 Canadian Vietnamese Boat People
Journey to Freedom - A recount of refugee experiences as featured on InÉdit
Vietnam's boat people: 25 years of fears, hopes and dreams, CNN

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Boat_people

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