Vietnam Refugees Tell of Deaths at Sea, Cannibalism

Vietnamese refugees told rescue workers in the Philippines that some of them killed and ate fellow passengers during a 37-day voyage at sea.

A U.N. refugee agency official today quoted some of the 52 survivors as saying three refugees, including an 11-year-old boy, were murdered and eaten, along with two who had starved to death.

“Some say everybody took part,” Robert Cooper, acting representative of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said. “Some say nobody took part.

“Some say one man ordered these people to be killed. We have many accounts of what happened.”

Cooper, who interviewed many of the survivors, said they landed on June 28. He quoted some as saying the boy, a man and a woman were killed. Military officials were holding one man in protective custody near the refugee camp on Palawan Island.

“The Vietnamese refugees are very angry about this kind of thing. Something like cannibalism can stir refugees in the camp to seek their own solution,” he said.

More than half the 110 people who set out from Vietnam on May 22 for Malaysia died during the voyage, most of hunger. The engine broke down on the second day and the group drifted helplessly until rescued by Filipino fishermen.

They had set out with enough food for three or four days, Cooper said. The captain left on a raft after they had been lost for some weeks.

He said the military near the refugee camp on Palawan were conducting a preliminary investigation and it would be up to Philippine authorities to decide whether to prosecute.