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of having their property confiscated and being shipped off to
harsh "new economic zones," areas which Le Monde has termed
While the Vietnamese government has
the "Vietnamese Gulag.
警爨
**
increased its pressure on Vietnamese of Chinese extraction,
Hanoi officials have also apparently made it easier for
this group of people to depart the country. Numerous reports
indicate that officials are registering ethnic Chinese, finding
them boats and towing them out to sea, all for a fee. There
appears to be a sliding scale of bribes to be paid in order to.
acquire passage on a boat leaving the country, with ethnic
Chinese eligible for a lesser bribe than ethnic Vietnamese.
undoubtedly have read recent articles out of Hong Kong reporting
details on the Vietnamese traffic in refugees. Our own informa-
tion confirms such reports. Ethnic Vietnamese are also fleeing.
the country in ever increasing numbers, with some passing them-
selves off as ethnic Chinese, and others taking any opportunity
available to them no matter how dangerous.
You
So far this year, 131,299 boat refugees from Vietnam have
reached temporary havens in nations of first asylum, compared
to 16,078 by this time last year. Heretofore this burden had
largely fallen on Malaysia and Thailand but now this exodus
has moved eastward as well and the numbers reaching Hong Kong
have leapt from some 17,000 in haven in April to over 50,000
there today. Although the numbers perishing at sea will never
be known with certainty, they are estimated in the range
of between 40-70 per cent.
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