exacting ayment in gold and confiscating the emigrants'
property in return for giving them "permission" to leave.
By mid-1979, over 54,000 boat people were arriving every
month in the South-East Asian countries. At the Geneva
Conference of July 1979, the Vietnamese Government eventually agreed on a programme of "orderly departure" to stem the flow The number of emigrants dropped markedly in the latter part of 1979 and in 1980, allowing the total of refugees living in
camps in countries of first asylum to be reduced under the
UN resettlement programme. However, as the number of refugees
rises again, countries of first asylum and of final
resettlement face the prospect of a revival of the
resettlement programme at a time when economic constraints
make many of them reluctant to take on new burdens,
The main reason for the latest increase in the refugee flow seems to be a deterioration in living conditions in Vietnam, particularly in the North where the situation is
worse than during the Vietnam War. Consumer goods and medi-
cines are in short supply, and food and clothing rations have
been drastically reduced.
According to official sources,
Many who leave appear
half the population is undernourished.
to be avoiding military service and being sent to fight in Cambodia. Some complain about increasing repression and lack of personal freedom. Whereas most of those who left in the
past came from the South and from Central Vietnam, the latest exodus is mainly of farmers and fishermen from the North. Their departure has been facilitated by the onset of the
monsoon with its favourable winds. A significant percentage of refugees since the end of 1980 has again been of ethnic
suggesting renewed pressure from the Vietnamese authorities on a minority they regard as a potential Fifth
Chinese
Column.
/The Vietnamese