Students Return From Visiting Refugees Exhausted, Inspired

UC Irvine student Trinh Do hastily rummaged through his luggage Thursday at Los Angeles International Airport and found a batch of photographs he and his three companions had taken.

“Here’s one of a small boy named Nguyen Thi Thanh Ha. I can’t forget him. He lost his family while they tried to escape from Vietnam in a boat,” Do said.

“They started with 33 people, but after 63 days on the high seas, only 25 survived. He only has an aunt in Florida and a brother who’s supposed to be somewhere in the United States. He asked me to help him find them. I told him I would help.”

After three weeks in Indochinese refugee camps near Hong Kong as part of a student volunteer project, four UC Irvine students returned to Southern California exhausted and full of vivid and unforgettable memories.

The students, members of Project Ngoc (the Pearl Project), were Garvin Melles, 27, a graduate student in mathematics; Duc Au, 21, a junior in economics; Lam Vu, 21, a senior electrical engineering major, and Do, 23, who is a graduate student in electrical engineering.

The trip is believed to be the first U.S. student volunteer project in an Indochinese refugee camp, said Van Tran, project chairman and UC Irvine student.

The students intend to write a report on their trip and also make some recommendations to Orange County’s Southeast Asian community.

“In many ways they were our eyes and ears over there, a representative link from the Southeast Asian community here in Little Saigon in Orange County to the refugee camps in Hong Kong,” Tran said.

Members of Project Ngoc, which is a student-based humanitarian group dedicated to helping Indochinese refugees, raised $3,500 to help pay travel costs and expenses.

Students also arranged for their passports and negotiated with the British government for permission to enter several refugee camps, including Camp Chi Ma Wan, on an island about one hour by boat from Hong Kong, Tran said.

The volunteers were invited by Catholic Charities (Caritas) Hong Kong after a senior Catholic Charities official visited Orange County last summer.

“We hope that with this first experience, we can set up other trips to return to the same refugee camps. We now know the camp officials and perhaps we can set up another trip, maybe for three months during the summer,” Tran said.

About 9,300 refugees, primarily from South Vietnam, are presently detained in five camps near Hong Kong. Refugee camp conditions in the Hong Kong area reportedly are better than in most other areas of Asia, but the closed camps still appear to be more like a prison than a transit center. Closed camps are fenced, and refugees who are sometimes referred to as detainees, cannot leave, the volunteers said.

The students visited five camps, including Kai Tak and Argyle Transit Center, both in Hong Kong. They also were allowed into two closed camps to interview refugees at Lei Lin Chau, on the same island as Chi Ma Wan, and Tuen Mun in Hong Kong.

For Au, Vu and Do, who are Vietnamese, the trip held special meaning. For Melles, it offered a first-hand opportunity to see conditions inside a refugee camp.

Each student brought back images hard to forget, they said.

Au, who was visibly upset several hours after arriving in Southern California, could not shake what he described as “the hopelessness of the refugees’ plight.”

The students said many refugees escaped persecution in their homeland only to arrive poor and hungry in another country where they are unwanted and their immigration status is in limbo.

Also, Au said, many refugees are fearful that they may never leave or, worse, be returned to Vietnam.

“I made a mistake. I committed myself to them, emotionally and intellectually. And I should not have. In the beginning, it hit me hard, and I had to get drunk the first two to three nights just to fall asleep,” Au said.

With the emotional lows, also came the highlights of the trip, they said.

The students recalled how refugees, old and young, broke down in sobs thankful for a show of affection, especially when the volunteers took time to chat with them.

“In one case, one old man offered us everything he had . . . food, even a handshake with trembling arms which were frail from despair,” Vu said.

Melles added: “I remember one woman telling me we were the first outsiders to photograph and talk to her since a group of visitors came in 1983.”

The most rewarding experience was when Au was told by a woman that she had envisioned their arrival.

“She said that she knew someday a group of students would come and visit and help them. She said, ‘It wouldn’t be the older generation. But students.’ We want to help them by never forgetting about them. I told her about the Southeast Asian community here in the United States. I know we can help them. We have to.”