Some Boat People Resist as They Are Forced to Return to Vietnam

A group of 59 Vietnamese “boat people,” some resisting strenuously, were forcibly repatriated today by the Hong Kong government, its first such move in almost two years.

Police put the 20 men, 16 women and 23 children under the age of 16 aboard a chartered Hercules C-130 transport plane. The plane took off for Hanoi after an hourlong struggle between police and the returnees. At least five of the men, shaking their fists and flailing arms in desperation, were carried onto the plane wrapped in blankets.

The unarmed police had to use force to get several other men and women aboard. One woman with clenched fists tried to bat her way through a blockade of 20 police officers who stood with their arms linked.

Clinton Leeks, Hong Kong’s refugee coordinator, said police carried out the operation “as sensitively as they could.”

“This is the way, sadly, that deportation is done all over the world,” he added.

They are the first group to be forced to return home from this British colony under an Oct. 29 London-Hanoi agreement applying to all boat people who are found not to be political refugees.

This first group consisted of “double-backers,” those who had returned once to Vietnam voluntarily, then traveled to Hong Kong a second time.

Friday, in the first stage of the government’s Operation Orderly Return, officers of the Correctional Services Department transferred the Vietnamese from the Hei Ling Chau Detention Center on an outlying island by British naval ferry to Kai Tak Airport.

Many looked despondent as they shuffled onto the vessel with their heads hanging. One man, however, defiantly clenched his fists over his head while a woman, hunched over and visibly distressed, dragged her feet on the ground as security officers carried her on board.

At the airport, police hustled the group into a hangar, where they spent the night before leaving for Hanoi. The Hong Kong government provided the Vietnamese with meals, a makeshift bed and entertainment videotapes, including one called “I Love Hong Kong.”

But the mood in Hong Kong’s largest detention center was not subdued. A government statement said that about 5,000 Vietnamese held three peaceful demonstrations Friday against forced repatriation in Whitehead, home to 25,616 boat people. Protesters chanted in support of their 59 compatriots bound for Hanoi.

Hong Kong’s detention centers are bursting at the seams with more than 63,000 boat people. Under U.N. guidelines, about 5,000 have qualified as refugees seeking political asylum. Almost 20,000 have been screened out as non-refugees.

On Dec. 12, 1989, Hong Kong forcibly repatriated 51 Vietnamese boat people, most of them women and children, resulting in an international outcry that forced it to withdraw the policy.

The United States voiced the loudest cry. Washington opposes the forced return of the boat people. But Leeks pointed out that the United States returns illegal immigrants to Mexico and to Haiti.

Hong Kong officials hope the London-Hanoi repatriation agreement will encourage the Vietnamese to return home voluntarily. Under a U.N. incentive plan, returnees receive an allowance of up to $360. Double-backers, who received a payment when they first returned to Vietnam, will not be entitled to further compensation.

Vietnam has promised not to persecute or harass the returnees.