Hong Kong Camp: Quiet Before Storm

Nguyen Van Nam sat at his “home” at the High Island Detention Center, the middle tier of a three-level bunk bed he shares with his wife and two children, and vowed to die rather than return to Vietnam.

If Hong Kong refuses to grant him refugee status, he said through an interpreter, “We would rather be dead here than go back to Vietnam.”

Similar responses were echoed by several other High Island residents during interviews recently, indicating that the days of tranquility for what has been a model detention center for Vietnamese “boat people” may be numbered.

So far, High Island has been free of the rioting, mass escapes and occasional suicide attempts that have plagued other detention centers for boat people since a group of 51 Vietnamese were forceably repatriated late last year.

The government has refused to allow journalists into any detention center since the deportation, citing safety concerns.

But in recent days, small groups of journalists have been taken to High Island in an apparent attempt by the government to put the best face on the camps, where squalid living conditions have been the subject of harsh international criticism.

“We have at the moment a happy camp,” Police Supt. R. L. Nicholls said of the facility, which is in a country park about an hour’s drive from downtown Hong Kong. But, he added, “We don’t think the complexion of this camp will last much longer.”

A main reason that High Island has remained relatively calm is that almost none of its residents have gone through the screening process that determines who will be resettled overseas and who will be repatriated. The camp is home to almost 7,000 people.

By contrast, nearly 8,000 of the 22,000 Vietnamese at the Whitehead Detention Center have been informed that they will not be granted refugee status. Security forces have fired tear gas to quell rioting and uncovered hundreds of homemade weapons at the camp in recent months.

The screening of High Island residents is scheduled to begin this summer. Police at the facility expect some resistance, and there are already signs of impending defiance.

“I’ll never go back to Vietnam,” said one 33-year-old man, who gave his name as Tran. He vowed to commit suicide if the government tries to force him back.

“They can force me to go back to Vietnam only if they tie my feet and hands,” said Nguyen Son Ha, 49, from the northern Vietnamese province of Quang Ninh.

Several Vietnamese expressed concern about the screening process, in which immigration officials determine who qualifies for refugee status. To qualify for such status, immigrants must prove that they fled their homeland out of a well-founded fear of persecution.

All High Island residents interviewed by this reporter expressed confidence that they would be screened in, but more than 80% of the boat people screened so far have been rejected.

Vietnamese residents confirmed that High Island, which opened in November, is a relatively quiet camp with little crime. But they complain about the quality of food, the lack of books and magazines and what they consider harsh treatment by some police officers.

They are crammed into 22 huts, each family sharing a tiny bunk-bed tier, and the camp is surrounded by a 20-foot-high fence topped with two loops of barbed wire.

Many Vietnamese lie listlessly on their beds as children scamper up and down the center aisle.

But Nicholls points out there is more space between the huts at High Island than at other detention centers, and there is a basketball court and open concrete space for other games.

He said that about 900 children attend classes managed by international volunteer agencies, and a $77,000 jungle gym donated by a U.S. Buddhist organization is popular.

Luu Chi Tich, a 49-year-old sports instructor from Hanoi, summed up the feeling in the camp. “In general, we are sad here.”