Refugees Adrift : Advocate for ‘Boat People’ Comes to County for Lobbying Strategy

Thousands of Indochinese “boat people” face grave peril if Southeast Asian countries, exhausted by waves of refugees, make good on threats to begin refusing new arrivals next month, refugee advocates warned Tuesday.

Unless a solution is reached, flimsy boats filled with desperate asylum seekers may be pushed back into the sea, they said.

“Towing people out to sea into pirate-infested waters and saying ‘good luck’ is a totally unacceptable way to treat people seeking asylum,” said Lionel Rosenblatt, president of the Washington-based group Refugees International.

Rosenblatt came to Orange County for strategy meetings Tuesday and Wednesday with Vietnamese-American community leaders, including newspaper publishers, religious leaders and refugee groups. They plan a campaign to draw attention to the plight of their countrymen and to urge the Bush Administration to intervene.

“This is the most serious crisis since 1979 . . . when hundreds if not thousands drowned, and we are about to see a repeat of that unless the U.S. takes a leadership role,” Rosenblatt said.

“We will take advantage of this year’s election to put pressure on the politicians, congressmen and senators of both parties, to work on our behalf--especially Sen. Pete Wilson,” said Nhi Ho, an Orange County Republican Party activist. “He is running for governor of California and California has the largest (overseas) Vietnamese community in the world.”

Since 1975, more than 1 million boat people have sought asylum in Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and other Southeast Asian nations. Under new screening procedures, many are deemed to have fled for economic reasons and are refused refugee status. Hong Kong’s decision to send 51 such boat people back to Vietnam in December triggered an international outcry. But no permanent solution for their resettlement has been found.

In May, the Southeast Asian countries and Hong Kong threatened to stop offering new arrivals temporary refuge starting July 1. They have demanded that the United States and Britain either agree to force the boat people to return to Vietnam, or set up and pay for a temporary holding center on U.S. or British soil.

State Department officials say Malaysia already has begun to push back seaborne asylum-seekers, four of whom have died. Washington has vigorously protested Malaysia’s actions, calling it a breach of international agreements. More than 8,300 boat people have made their way to Indonesia this year after being rebuffed by Malaysia, but there are no estimates of how many others may have drowned or fallen victim to Thai pirates, Rosenblatt said.

“By definition, when whole boats go down, there isn’t any evidence; so we’re afraid that there are many more tragedies than the four deaths we know about,” he said.

In a related development, the Philippines has refused to admit 101 Vietnamese boat people who were rescued on the South China Sea and have been stranded aboard a U.S. Navy supply ship in Subic Bay for two weeks, the Washington Post reported this week. Citing the 25,000 refugees already in the Philippines, officials there said they will no longer allow U.S. vessels to leave refugees on their shores without a guarantee that they will be resettled elsewhere within six months.

“There is an empathy fatigue for refugees,” said Mai Cong, chairman of the Vietnamese Community of Orange County Inc., a social services agency. “However, I strongly believe that as a country who wants to see freedom for everyone, we shouldn’t turn our back.”

Cong and Nhiem, who have each been active in opposing forced repatriation, said they would organize letter-writing campaigns, petitions or demonstrations to draw attention to the latest threat.

“We have to look at what we can do to help,” Cong said.

About 20 Asian-American groups from across the nation are also purchasing a Washington newspaper advertisement this week urging President Bush to act before the July 1 deadline. Among the backers, Rosenblatt said, are the Boat People SOS Committee in San Diego, Project Ngoc of Irvine, the Vietnamese Community of Southern California Inc. and the Council for Refugee Rights in Costa Mesa.

“The Vietnamese-American community is going to have to come of age politically if we are to get action on this,” Rosenblatt said. “Their compatriots’ lives are at risk and we want them to use all of their political clout and economic muscle.”

Westminster newspaper publisher Yen Do signed the ad and pledged his support to the campaign Tuesday. But the publisher of Nguoi Viet said he doubted that Asian-Americans could budge an administration that has rejected the idea of a holding center.

“I think the U.S. government doesn’t want to be tied diplomatically to any further measures in Southeast Asia,” Do said. But, he noted, “forced repatriation in Hong Kong produced a huge reaction around the world, and I think the same thing will happen when the Southeast Asian countries begin pushing the people away.”

Rosenblatt said he also hopes the educational campaign will persuade California’s Vietnamese-American citizens to write their friends and relatives back home and urge them not to attempt to flee Vietnam by boat.

Warnings in the Vietnamese press have apparently had little effect, he said. Refugees he met six weeks ago in camps in Malaysia and Indonesia told him that they would not have attempted the trip had they understood the dangers of the ocean crossing and the stricter criteria for resettlement in the West.

Recently the Vietnamese have also been joined by a new stream of Cambodian boat people, who do not meet the international criteria for refugee status. Rosenblatt said there are unconfirmed reports that among the Cambodians who have fled by boat are low- or mid-level officials in the Vietnamese-backed Hun Sen government.

A spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said the commissioner leaves today for visits to Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines, where he will discuss the asylum issue.

The official also said that the commissioner hoped the impasse could be resolved at a meeting of the steering committee of the international conference on Indochinese refugees scheduled to take place in Geneva late this month or early in July.