Malaysia Said to Shut Off Asylum for ‘Boat People’ : Refugees: Six dead, 263 are missing after being turned away from nation’s shores, U.S. group says.

A U.S. refugee organization charged Tuesday that there has been a “complete shutdown” in Malaysia’s policy of granting asylum to Vietnamese refugees and that thousands of people arriving by boat have been pushed off into the sea.

Lionel Rosenblatt, executive director of Washington-based Refugees International, told a news conference here that at least six people have died after being repelled from Malaysian shores and that 263 people are missing.

Rosenblatt said that in the last 10 months, 5,525 Vietnamese arrived in the Indonesian refugee camp at Galang, near Singapore, on boats that Malaysian authorities had towed out to sea after giving them fuel and food. Some had been given map coordinates for Australia, thousands of miles to the south.

Malaysia has vehemently denied that it is pushing off refugees as a matter of policy unless requested to do so by the refugees themselves.

The send-offs have caused a crisis in relations between Kuala Lumpur and Washington. The U.S. State Department has issued a statement expressing deep distress over the deaths of Vietnamese refugees because of the Malaysian action.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Abu Hassan Omar flew to the United States on Sunday to give his government’s version of its refugee policy.

“It is important that U.S. residents get the correct picture of what we are doing,” he said.

Under an agreement signed in 1979, Malaysia is obligated to receive “boat people” as a nation of “first asylum,” with the expectation that eventually they will be sent on to the United States or another final destination.

But the Malaysians have been concerned that the United States is blocking worldwide agreement to send home to Vietnam those boat people who are determined to be economic migrants instead of refugees, thus not qualifying for resettlement in the West. There are about 15,000 boat people camped in Malaysia’s Pulau Bedong refugee center.

“It is not normal diplomatic behavior to throw thousands of people off your beaches because they have problems with an international agreement,” Rosenblatt told the news conference. “It is totally irresponsible to use the boat people to change international opinion.”

Rosenblatt said that since last year, only three boatloads of Vietnamese refugees have been allowed to land in Malaysia. They carried 122 refugees, compared to the 5,661 that he said had been sent away by the authorities.

In an effort to counter the Malaysian denials, Rosenblatt released letters from Vietnamese in Galang describing their voyages from Malaysia to Indonesia.

During a four-day visit to Malaysia, Rosenblatt raised the possibility of a tourism and trade embargo by the United States if Malaysia continues to push refugees out to sea.

Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Ghafar Baba responded to the accusations by offering to send all of the Vietnamese refugees now in Malaysia to the United States.

“The United States is in no position to accuse us,” he said. “They should just accept all these refugees.”

BACKGROUND The 1979 Geneva Conference on Refugees brought more than 60 nations together to offer asylum to Vietnamese “boat people.” Ten years later, a second Geneva conference was held to stop the exodus. At the 1989 conference, Britain led a drive to force repatriation of migrants fleeing for economic reasons. The U.S. and Vietnam were the only nations to oppose the policy. In Hong Kong, more than 7,000 refugees have been screened out and would face deportation if international agreement were reached. Another 30,000 are waiting to be screened.