Teen Seeks to Be Voice for Refugees in Camps : Immigration: The Vietnamese orphan ‘represents a human dimension to the tragedy of the boat people,’ rights activist says.

Ngo Van Ha is a 16-year-old orphan who speaks little English. But next week, he will testify before a congressional subcommittee, and what he has to say may yet influence national policy on the estimated 50,000 Vietnamese “boat people” still languishing in refugee camps in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.

Local refugee rights activists say the frail teen-ager, barely 5 feet tall, personalizes what they describe as a continuing tragedy.

“He presents a human dimension to the tragedy of the boat people,” said Van Tran of the Westminster chapter of the Legal Assistance for Vietnamese Asylum Seekers, which provides legal services for refugees. “If a pale child can speak before a powerful committee, it will send a message to the authorities running the camps.”

Ha arrived in the United States April 12 after spending four years at a Hong Kong refugee camp, where he became a celebrity of sorts by surviving repeated attempts by the Hong Kong government and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to send him back to Vietnam.

Ha was orphaned at age 10, when his parents died in a bus accident in Vietnam. He lived with relatives until he was 12, then fled Vietnam by boat with 35 other people and wound up in the Hong Kong refugee camp.

Last year, the High Commissioner for Refugees attempted to send Ha back to Vietnam, but his relatives there did not want him because they could not afford to raise him.

The relatives who did want him--a distant aunt and uncle in San Gabriel--were not allowed to bring him to the United States until a barrage of publicity in the Hong Kong media and efforts by lawyers from refugee rights groups forced the High Commissioner for Refugees to grant him refugee status.

Now, Ha wants to be the voice of those left behind in the refugee camps, he said.

“I want to speak about the conditions in the refugee camps,” he said through an interpreter before leaving for Washington on Friday. “I want to repay those who have helped and took care of me.”

Ha is one of 13 Indochinese refugees who will appear before the House Subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific Affairs, which is investigating cases involving Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong and Hmong refugees in Thailand.

Officials from the U.S. State Department and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees will also testify.

Congressional leaders want to find out if there is an “institutional bias” in the way certain cases, especially those involving children, are being handled by U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees investigators screening refugees.

Refugee advocates said they hope that Ha’s testimony will also help stop the forced repatriation of refugees to Vietnam and speed up the screening process for those seeking asylum in other countries.

“This is not an immigration issue but a human rights issue,” said Lan Nguyen, a LAVAS attorney.

Nguyen said that at a time of strong anti-immigrant sentiments, it is hard to overcome negative public perception about refugees. And while LAVAS is advocating the resettlement of refugees, it is not suggesting that they all be resettled in the United States, he said.

But the public has to be educated about the abuse the refugees are suffering at the camps, he said.

Many refugees are summarily denied refugee status, Nguyen said. In an effort to empty the camps, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the host countries have removed health clinics and other services, triggering protest from refugees that sometimes end in violence, he said.

This week, the Southeast Asian Resource Action Center in Washington, which provides medical and other services to refugees, reported that Hong Kong police used tear gas to break up a group of nearly 2,000 protesting refugees.

Werner Blatter, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees bureau director for Asia and Oceania, met with Vietnamese community leaders this year in several American cities. In his Jan. 14 meeting with Orange County Vietnamese leaders, he said that the problems of violence and medical care in the camps will be addressed.

For Ha, the Tai A Chau refugee camp in Hong Kong was both a home and a prison.

“I would look beyond the barbed wires and hope that I could go outside,” he said. “But I didn’t think of going back to Vietnam. I had no family in Vietnam. I had no place to live. My parents were dead.”

After his parents died in 1985, Ha said that he and his two brothers and a sister lived with an uncle, who had children of his own, in Nha Trang. Ha’s elder brother left Vietnam and is now in a refugee camp in the Philippines, he said.

Ha said that he tried to leave Vietnam at least 20 times. He was arrested twice, but was finally successful in 1990.

At the camp, Ha foraged for food with the other children. He said breakfast consisted of watered-down milk and a slice of bread. “If you sleep late, you don’t eat,” he said.

Lunch was a tiny piece of meat, pickled cabbage, rice and soup. Supper was meat, or fish, and rice. There were curfews and roll calls, like a prison, he said.

In 1993, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees tried to send Ha back to Vietnam to live with his uncle under a policy that requires children to be reunited with their families or closest relatives, even if it means sending them back to Vietnam.

Ha refused to go, and for four months, Hong Kong police hunted for him at the Tai A Chau detention camp. He eluded arrest by wearing disguises, hiding under beds and using the other refugees as lookouts.

When he was finally captured and transferred to another camp in preparation to being sent back to Vietnam, the 2,000 detainees at the Tai A Chau camp went on a hunger strike in protest.

Ha’s exploits landed in the Hong Kong media and got the attention of a Hong Kong lawyer, Pam Baker, who offered free legal services to prevent his forced return to Vietnam. She contacted Ha’s uncle and aunt in San Gabriel--Vu and Tuyet Ho Nguyen--and asked them to take the boy.

Baker eventually persuaded Jahanshah Assadi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees chief of mission in Hong Kong, to grant Ha refugee status and allow him to join his relatives.

“When I stepped out of the plane, I thought I was in heaven,” Ha said. “This is my dream, to come to the United States.”

His relatives were just as excited.

“I’m thrilled,” said Lori Nguyen, 15, Ha’s cousin. “He’s like a new brother. And it’s neat because all my older brothers are going to college.”

Ha said that his main concern now is to get an education. He said that facing a congressional hearing does not scare him.

“I’m comfortable,” said Ha, who learned a little English at the camps. “I’ve seen more scary things before.”

Home in Camps More than 57,000 Vietnamese refugees remain in camps, chiefly in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. Where they are: Hong Kong: 51% Indonesia: 17% Philippines: 8% Thailand: 11% Malaysia: 13% Note: A few are also in Singapore and Macao. Source: Southeast Asian Resource Action Center; Researched by BERT ELIERA / For The Times