17 Boat People Killed in Clash in Hong Kong

Vietnamese boat people wielding homemade spears and axes battled each other Monday evening, leaving at least 17 dead and 117 injured in the worst violence in the British colony’s refugee camps, police said.

Police said that about 300 boat people--apparently from rival gangs--began fighting late Monday in the Shek Kong Detention Center, home to 8,900 boat people. During the riot, someone set fire to a hut.

Fireman doused the fire 90 minutes later and pulled 17 charred bodies from the structure, police said, adding that some bodies were burned beyond recognition.

It was not immediately known whether the riot was related to recent moves by the British colonial government to forcibly return Vietnamese to their Communist homeland. So far, two planeloads of Vietnamese have been taken home.

More than 300 riot police rushed to the camp and blasted it with 33 canisters of tear gas. One police officer was slightly injured. The injured boat people were taken to hospitals.

Police said initial investigations indicate that the combatants were rival gangs from what used to be North and South Vietnam. Tension between Vietnamese from the two former states is high in Hong Kong’s squalid detention centers, home to 60,000 Vietnamese.

The riot was the worst incidence of violence since Vietnamese began flooding Hong Kong’s shores more than 12 years ago. Since the boat people exodus began, more than 300,000 Vietnamese have come to Hong Kong; altogether more than 1.5 million have left Vietnam.

The British colonial government has begun a program to force Vietnamese home. Boat people have protested the policy, claiming that they will be mistreated by the Vietnamese government.