The Dreams of a Better Life Sail Away for ‘Boat People’ : Southeast Asia: The forced repatriation of Vietnamese by Hong Kong prompts threats of suicide.

Above a high steel wall topped with barbed wire surrounding the 25,616 Vietnamese “boat people” at Whitehead detention center here, black letters on a fluttering white flag sent a message to the world: “SOS.”

A sense of desperation is growing and tensions have run high since an Oct. 29 agreement between Britain and Vietnam providing for the forced repatriation of all Vietnamese in Hong Kong who are found not to be political refugees. Residents of several camps in the British colony have staged frequent protests against involuntary repatriation, saying they would rather commit suicide than live under communism.

“You are pushing our fates into the dead end of Communist prisons,” declared a note slipped out of Whitehead last week. “We bring to the American Congress a message of blood and tears with cries for urgent help from people who thirst for freedom like we thirst for sunshine. Save us.”

Relief workers in the detention centers say that most Vietnamese are taking news of the repatriation agreement with quiet despair as they see dreams of a better life slipping away. Threats of suicide dramatize the depth of their despair, said Philip Barker, Hong Kong field director for Save the Children Fund.

“Many of the Vietnamese are clinging to a hope that someday they will get to America,” Barker said. “They are very disappointed.”

A group of 59 Vietnamese boat people, some kicking and screaming as they were dragged onto the plane, were forcibly repatriated Saturday by the Hong Kong government, the first such move in almost two years.

This first group consisted of “double-backers,” those who had returned to Vietnam once voluntarily, then traveled to Hong Kong a second time. Authorities say these people came a second time in order to get the money paid to those who voluntarily return home, which can exceed a year’s income for the average person in Vietnam.

More than 7,000 Vietnamese in Whitehead, home to the largest concentration of boat people, chanted Saturday in support of their 59 compatriots sent to Hanoi.

The crowded camps, filled with discouraged people, seem to be getting rougher and violence sometimes flares. A 39-year-old man was stabbed to death Oct. 31 at Whitehead in a brawl over a television show.

Since the forced-repatriation agreement was announced, the Hong Kong government has cut off media access to camps whose residents may be forced back to Vietnam. Authorities are also blocking attempts by Vietnamese to get messages to local or foreign reporters. A 10-foot-high burlap barrier has been put up at the spot on Whitehead’s perimeter where banners denouncing mandatory repatriation could be seen from the road.

The Vietnamese here are part of the flood of nearly 1 million who fled their homeland over the last 15 years. Many who had sided with the South Vietnamese government and its American backers during the Vietnam War feared Communist persecution after the collapse of the Saigon regime in 1975. Others left to escape the poverty of a war-racked, stagnant socialist economy.

Often jammed into small vessels, these refugees took terrible risks. Some were victims of storms, starvation and illness. Others fell prey to pirates who robbed them, killed the men and raped the women before throwing them into the sea.

Most made it to safety in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines or Singapore, to be kept for a time in camps and then resettled, often in Western countries. But as their welcome faded in those countries, the backlog awaiting resettlement grew. Pressure rose to shut off the flow, even to get some to go home.

Returning them to Vietnam proved difficult. Most refused to go and only a handful submitted to voluntary repatriation. The idea of involuntary repatriation was condemned by many as coercing people to return to Communist repression. In last month’s British-Vietnamese agreement, Hanoi promised not to “persecute or harass” returnees, and Britain reportedly agreed to provide up to $1,000 per person for development projects and low-interest loans for their reintegration into Vietnam.

Hong Kong’s 10 detention camps house about 64,000 Vietnamese who came in search of the political asylum that brings eligibility for resettlement in the United States or other Western countries. Partly because Hong Kong does not push boats back out to sea, as some Southeast Asian countries do, it has become the favored destination for about 90% of all boat people leaving Vietnam.

But only about 5,000 of those now in Hong Kong’s camps have been officially recognized as political refugees--those with a well-founded fear of political persecution. Another 20,000 have been declared economic migrants who came here hoping for a better life and have no place to go but back to Vietnam. The rest await screening.

The Hong Kong government hopes that many Vietnamese will volunteer to go home. But many camp residents are determined that the Vietnamese should stay in Hong Kong and press for resettlement in other countries.

“It is very difficult for Vietnamese in detention centers to put themselves forward to volunteer for repatriation,” said Jane Warburton, director of the relief organization Community and Family Services International. “They fear that they will break the solidarity.”

Rita Fan, a member of Hong Kong’s legislature, said that splits among camp residents can be dangerous, even deadly. Violence broke out over repatriation even before the formal London-Hanoi agreement was reached, she said.

“Vietnamese protest leaders at Whitehead seriously wounded a man on Oct. 10 because he refused to participate in the demonstrations against mandatory repatriation,” Fan said, disputing the Hong Kong government’s account that the man was stabbed over a chess dispute.

Some of those who have broken ranks by volunteering to return home say that false rumors have been spread that Lo Wu detention camp, reserved for those awaiting voluntary repatriation, is unsafe.

A 28-year-old woman, who gave birth to a baby boy during her 2 1/2-year stay in one of the camps, said she waited for more than a year before confiding to U.N. aid workers that she was willing to return to Vietnam.

“When I realized that my baby had no opportunity to live in America, I knew I had to build a new life for him,” said the woman, who under rules imposed on reporters by camp authorities cannot be identified.

Although London says that Hanoi has agreed not to persecute returnees, the staff at Lo Wu, the only detention center open to reporters, said that identifying those who are quoted is forbidden for fear that they may actually face persecution in Vietnam.

“We must keep the names anonymous because many have indicated that they may be under severe persecution when they return home,” said Stephen Ho, acting superintendent at Lo Wu.

Hong Kong officials also say that lawyers are advising them to deny reporters access to Vietnamese who have been screened or who are waiting to be screened, as a precaution against any political persecution by Hanoi.

Fan argued that the real reason for the media restrictions is that the detention centers are highly volatile. “I think the government doesn’t want reporters going into the camps because emotions among the Vietnamese boat people could become very highly charged,” she said. “The government is under a lot of pressure to control the mood in the camps, in particular Whitehead.”

Early last week, security officials transferred 1,153 Vietnamese out of Whitehead and seized hundreds of homemade weapons after several days of violent clashes. A government statement said tear gas was used to break up the brawls and re-establish “more harmonious living conditions.”

Hong Kong government refugee coordinator Clinton Leeks said the Vietnamese refugees are living in an environment that sparks domestic rows. “We are dealing with a variety of people from different backgrounds who have been put together in close living quarters,” he said, adding that the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and other relief agencies have the responsibility for maintaining stability in the detention centers.

Leeks said rumors that the United States might open its doors wider, even to those now classified as economic migrants, contribute to false hopes and tensions in the camps. “We try to prevent that by picking up on lies in the camps in order to better implement a phenomenon we call ‘counter-counseling,’ ” he said. This involves giving the Vietnamese correct information and helping them cope with the reality of returning home.

Hong Kong hopes to empty its detention camps within two or three years by resettling political refugees elsewhere and forcing everyone else to return to Vietnam.

Alistair Asprey, Hong Kong’s secretary for security, said at a news conference late last month, “We will do everything we can to encourage and enable people to return home in dignity. Whether they do so, in the final analysis, depends on their own behavior, which we cannot control.”

In 1989, Hong Kong’s forcible repatriation of 51 Vietnamese refugees, mostly women and children, provoked an international outcry. From that time until Saturday, Hong Kong repatriated only those who volunteered to go home.

The United States remains opposed to the forced return of Vietnamese refugees from Hong Kong. Princeton Lyman, director of the State Department’s Bureau for Refugee Programs, told a House Asian and Pacific Affairs subcommittee hearing last week, “We expect that force will not be used to return those screened out to Vietnam. We will judge these procedures by what actually occurs.”

The United States has been unwilling to accept for settlement Vietnamese who are not political refugees, but the boat people had assumed that Washington would have a change of heart. The United States is trying to discourage such hopes. Washington has ordered officials at the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong to visit the camps to tell the boat people that U.S. policy will not change.

“Our people go into the camps under the auspices of the (U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees) to remove any false expectations by non-refugees of having a chance to resettle in America,” said Valerie Steenson, press officer for the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong.

Aid workers in the camps are helping the Vietnamese deal with the pain and anguish of going back. “People in the camps express all kinds of concerns about going home, from economic hardships to political persecution,” Warburton said. Vietnam is one of the world’s poorest countries and continues to suffer the effects of the U.S. trade embargo.

Last year, many Vietnamese came here by land across South China, making only a short boat trip to Hong Kong from the Chinese coast. But the numbers using this relatively safe route have fallen off again.

This year, according to government statistics, 90% of new arrivals came all the way from Vietnam in rickety boats, the cheapest but most dangerous way.

A 61-year-old woman named Nguyen, who comes from a small village near the port of Haiphong, said before returning to Vietnam last week that she volunteered to go home because she saw no other choice.

“I remember the American bombing, but the memory gets vague,” she said. “That’s why we left. Vietnam is so poor. Now there’s no hope for a better life.”