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The Boat Refugees from Vietnam
S
菌蛋
CEFA
FROM New Year's Day when the Panamanian-registered cargo ship Huey Fong lay at anchor just outside Hong Kong waters, her decks crowded with 3,318 refugees - through to New Year's Eve 12 months later, 1979 was a year overshadowed by one relentless problem: the Vietnam refugees, or boat people. The influx of these refugees, together with large-scale immigration from China, raised real fears that a decade of economic and social achievement might be undermined, communal stability impaired, and plans for further progress thrown out of gear.
The story, which began so dramatically on December 23, 1978, with the arrival of the Huey Fong, went on to reach crisis proportions in the middle of the year when refugees were pouring into Hong Kong at a rate of more than 600 a day, crowding into camps already holding 50,000 people. It was at this crucial time that the British Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, called for an international conference on the problem and, soon afterwards, the Governor, Sir Murray MacLehose, flew to London, the United States and Geneva to draw attention to the extremity of the dangers confronting Hong Kong and other countries in Southeast Asia. At this point, the United Nations Secretary-General, Dr Waldheim, announced his decision to call an international conference in Geneva to discuss a catastrophe which could threaten world peace.
It would be agreeable to record that 1979 ended with a clear-cut conclusion; that, as a result of the undertakings and pledges given at the Geneva conference in July, Hong Kong was assured that by a certain date all of the 73,700 refugees it had harboured would be resettled elsewhere, and that the fear of a renewed influx had been dispelled.
Unfortunately, real life is rarely so tidy. At the close of the year, the people of Hong Kong could look back on events and feel relief, gratitude and pride: relief that the influx in the second half of the year had eased; relief, too, that the resettlement pledges made at Geneva had resulted in an increased rate of departures; gratitude to those countries which had helped, notably Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and West Germany; and pride in the fact that Hong Kong had refused to repel the boat people and send them away to their death.
However what Hong Kong could not do was regard the problem as solved, its dangers belonging to the past. On the last day of 1979, there was a total of 55,705 refugees in Hong Kong awaiting resettlement. Just as the refugee problem projects its shadows into 1980 and beyond, so its origins in the mid-1970s and earlier cannot be overlooked. Other countries, too, must feature in an account of events which thrust Hong Kong into a role on the inter- national stage. In Hong Kong itself, the impact of the crisis can only be understood in the context of past problems and challenges, in particular, the waves of immigration which the territory has sustained in the past 35 years.