Boat people 300822 225141506 2008-07-12T02:42:44Z Shop talk 7460588 /* Escape route */ {{otheruses|Boat people (disambiguation)}} '''Boat people''' is a term (usually) referring to [[illegal immigrant]]s or [[asylum seekers]] who arrive en masse in old or crudely-made [[boat]]s. The term came into common use during the late 1970s with the mass departure of [[Vietnam]]ese refugees from communist-controlled Vietnam, following the [[Vietnam War]]. [[Image:Boat People from Haiti.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Boat people from Haiti]] It is also a widely used form of [[Emigration|migration]] or escape for people migrating from [[Cuba]] (often under the [[Cuban Adjustment Act]] or [[Wet feet, dry feet policy|Wet-foot, Dry-foot policy]]), [[Haiti]], [[Dominican Republic]][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominican_Republic], [[Morocco]], [[Vietnam]] or [[Albania]]. They often risk their lives on dangerously crude and overcrowded boats, to escape oppression or [[poverty]] in their home nations. In 2001, 353 asylum-seekers sailing from [[Indonesia]] to [[Australia]] drowned when their [[SIEV-X|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]], [[Canada]], [[Italy]], [[Spain]] and Australia. Boat people are often forcibly prevented from landing at their destination, such as under Australia's "[[Pacific Solution]]", or they are subjected to [[mandatory detention]] 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== [[Image:Vietnamkrieg Bootsflüchtling 1980.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Vietnamese boat person in a refugee camp]] Events resulting from the [[Vietnam War]] led many people in [[Cambodia]], [[Laos]], and especially Vietnam to become refugees in the late 1970s and 1980s, after the [[fall of Saigon]]. In Vietnam, the new communist government sent many people who supported the old government in the South to "[[re-education camp]]s", and others to "new economic zones." An estimated 1 million people were imprisoned without formal charges or trials.<ref name="dart">{{cite web|url=http://www.dartcenter.org/dartaward/2002/hm3/01.html |title=Millions of lives changed forever with Saigon's fall |date=2001-04-29 |publisher=Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma}} </ref> 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.<ref name='dart'/> 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.<ref name='dart'/> These factors, coupled with poverty, caused hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese to flee the country. In 1979, Vietnam was at war ([[Sino-Vietnamese War]]) with the [[People's Republic of China]] (PRC), and many [[Hoa|ethnic Chinese]] 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 [[piracy|pirates]]. In Cambodia, the [[Khmer Rouge]] 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<ref>http://www.civilization.ca/cultur/vietnam/vilea03e.html</ref>. 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.<ref>citation needed.</ref> 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.<ref>http://www.civilization.ca/cultur/vietnam/vilea03e.html</ref> The boats, most usually not intended for navigating open waters, would typically head for busy international shipping lanes some 240&nbsp;km to the east. The lucky ones would succeed in being rescued by freighters and taken to Hong Kong, some 2,200&nbsp;km away<ref name="gold">{{cite news | last = Chang | first = Harold | title = Vietnam escape trail paved with gold | date = 1977-06-26 | publisher = South China Morning Post | page =1 |url=http://sunzi1.lib.hku.hk/newspaper/view/02_09.01/127011.pdf }}</ref>. 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]] committed by[[Thai people|Thai]] 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]], set up refugee camps in neighbouring countries to process the "boat people". They got the 1981 [[Nobel Peace Prize]] for this. Camps were set up in [[Malaysia]], [[Thailand]], the [[Philippines]], [[Hong Kong]], and [[Indonesia]]. According to stories told by the Vietnamese refugees, the conditions at the camps were bad. Not much of the generous [[aid]] 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]]. However, soon after the first wave between 1975-1978, [[North Vietnam]]ese from seaside cities such as [[Haiphong]] started to escape and land in Hong Kong. Among them were genuine ethnically Chinese Vietnamese refugees who escaped from Vietnam and headed to [[China]] 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]] 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]] by letting over 100,000 Vietnamese refugees in such a quick pace. The countries that accepted most of these refugees were: *[[United States]] - 823,000 *Australia and Canada - 137,000 each *[[France]] - 96,000 *[[Germany]] and [[United Kingdom|UK]] - 19,000 each *[[Israel]] 400 By late 1980s, Western Europe, the United States and Australia received fewer Vietnamese refugees {{Fact|date=February 2007}}. It became much harder to get [[visa (document)|visa]]s to settle in these countries. The refugees faced prospects of staying years in the camps and ultimate [[repatriation]] back to Vietnam. They were branded, rightly or wrongly, as economic [[refugee]]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{{Fact|date=April 2007}}. 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]] about the fate of a group of boat people, as seen through the eyes of a Japanese journalist. *'''[[Green Dragon (film)|Green Dragon]]''', a 2001 film by the Vietnamese American director [[Timothy Linh Bui]], depicts the lives and struggles of Vietnamese refugees at [[Camp Pendleton]] following the Fall of Saigon. *'''[[Journey from the Fall]]''' ({{lang-vi|Vượt Sóng}}) is an independent movie by writer/director/editor [[Ham Tran]] in [[2005]], about the [[Vietnamese people|Vietnamese]] refugee camp and [[boat people]] experience following the [[Fall of Saigon]] on April 30th, 1975. * '''[[Bolinao 52]]''' 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]]. == Notes == {{reflist}} ==See also== *[[Orderly Departure Program]] *[[MS Tampa]] *[[Cap Anamur]] *[[Vietnamese people in Hong Kong]] *[[Bắt đầu từ nay]] *[[Galang Refugee Camp]] *[http://www.bidonggalang.com/revisit2005en/index.htm Revisit of Galang camp, destruction of monument at request of Vietnam government] *[[Comprehensive Plan of Action]] for Indochinese Refugees *[[Philippine refugee processing center|Philippine Refugee Processing Center]] *[[Skyluck|The refugee freighter Skyluck]] *[[Journey from the Fall|Boat People movie ''Journey from the Fall'']] *[[Fall of Saigon#Human rights after the fall|Human rights after the fall of Saigon]] *[[Việt Kiều]] *[[Vietnamese American]] ==External links== *[http://www.civilization.ca/cultur/vietnam/viint00e.html The Canadian Museum of Civilization - Boat People No Longer] *[http://archives.cbc.ca/IDD-1-69-524/life_society/boat_people/ Boat people - a refugee crisis]: [[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation|CBC]] Archives footage *[http://www.unhcr.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/publ/opendoc.pdf?id=3ebf9bad0&tbl=PUBL Flight from Indochina]: from [[UNHCR]] *[http://www.bpsos.org/ Boat People S.O.S] *[http://geocities.com/dangdthanh/html/galang/theboat.pdf The boat people: Imprints on history, by Lloyd Duong PDF] * [http://www.vnbp.org/ Archive of Vietnamese Boatpeople] *[http://www.boatpeople.org/ Website of a Vietnamese Boat People] * [http://multiculturalcanada.ca/vietnamese Oral History Interviews with 15 Canadian Vietnamese Boat People] *[http://fansites.hollywood.com/~inedit/library/essays/journey_to_freedom_hai-van_nguyen.php Journey to Freedom] - A recount of refugee experiences as featured on [http://fansites.hollywood.com/~inedit/ InÉdit] * [http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/vietnam/story/boat.people/ Vietnam's boat people: 25 years of fears, hopes and dreams], CNN {{Cleanup|date=August 2006}} {{Citations missing|date=December 2006}} [[Category:Human migration]] [[Category:Refugees]] [[Category:Vietnamese diaspora]] [[Category:History of Vietnam]] [[Category:Vietnamese migration]] [[Category:Vietnamese refugees]] [[Category:Illegal immigrants]] [[de:Boatpeople]] [[fr:Boat-people]] [[it:Boat people]] [[nl:Bootvluchteling]] [[ja:ボートピープル]] [[pl:Boat people]] [[vi:Thuyền nhân]]