3.
Fees additional to the actual passage are exacted by government agents for making the arrangements. Though fees vary,
a rough estimate is the equivalent in gold of about £1,500 sterling for an adult and half for a child. Those unable to realise such sums secure them from relatives overseas who make payments into foreign bank accounts through middlemen. Refugees are officially directed to points where gold may be bought and transactions arranged. The refugee traffic is lucrative to the Vietnamese Government; estimates suggest that it has become perhaps Vietnam's second highest currency earner after coal.
Countries in South-East Asia have taken measures to discourage the arrival of refugees. On 13 June Malaysia and Indonesia were reported to have announced officially that they would no longer give temporary asylum to boat refugees. Not all countries have accepted that people rescued at sea by ocean-going vessels should be put ashore at the first scheduled port of call. Hong Kong has consistently allowed refugees to land. In response to recent developments, however, it has enacted legislation to allow it to prevent large ships from entering harbour with refugees aboard if Hong Kong is not the first port of call or if the vessels concerned are believed to be involved in the organised traffic of refugees. Under Hong Kong's new legislation penalties for carrying excess passengers have been raised and those aboard are presumed to be passengers unless proved otherwise. A master claiming that his passengers are shipwreck victims will have to prove this.
The trial began in Hong Kong on 7 June 1979 of the master and some members of the crew of the freighter Huey Fong, who landed more than 3,000 refugees in the territory in January. The captain admitted a charge of defrauding the Hong Kong Government with the intention of gaining admittance for the refugees, but denied carrying an excess number of passengers.
The prosecution alleged that the Vietnamese Government, by organising and supervising the shipment and charging the adult passengers the equivalent in gold of more than £1,000 each, had made more than £2 million from the arrangement. After sailing from a harbour on the Southern Vietnamese coast on 18 December 1978, the captain was said to have claimed by radio to the Hong Kong Marine Department that he had rescued a large number of refugees at sea off Vietnam.
He was offered urgent supplies and medical attention if needed, but instructed to proceed to the nearest port and not Hong Kong. A week later he anchored outside Hong Kong waters and sailed into them on 19 January 1979, though he had been repeatedly told to proceed to his first scheduled port of call in Taiwan,
Investigations are being made into the voyage of the Skyluck, another ocean-going vessel, which arrived in Hong Kong without permission on 7 February 1979.
The master claimed that 2,638 passengers on board were rescued at sea. A group of Vietnamese refugees told a Philippines Justice Ministry enquiry on 8 June that they paid a Vietnamese organisation in gold or dollars for passage aboard the Tung An, which waited off the Vietnamese coast last December to collect them. The ship's captain had claimed that he had rescued them from small boats at sea.
International consultations
Foreign Ministers of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), at a special meeting in Bangkok on 12-13 January 1979, reviewed the economic, social, political and security aspects of the influx of both refugees and illegal immigrants into their area. They stressed the importance of persuading a wider range of countries to offer permanent settlement.