boat people

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Boat People, refugees who escaped by sea from the Vietnamese communist regime after the fall of Saigon in 1975, a process that continued for about fifteen years. The exodus across the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea began slowly. About 5,240 escaped in 1976, but in 1977 there were 15,690, and in 1978, when ethnic Chinese joined the exodus, the numbers rose dramatically. In November 1978 alone the number of escapees exceeded 21,000, and January–July 1979 over 65,000, most of them ethnic Chinese, reached Hong Kong.

At first most Boat People attempted to reach the nearest landfall, southern Thailand, but acts of piracy by Thai fishermen were so rampant that from 1977 most tried to reach Malaysia instead. However, they were often blown off course or their rickety craft suffered engine failure, and they ended up as far away as Indonesia and Japan, and even Australia. The loss of life through bad weather, piracy, disease, and starvation amounted, according to a report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, to about one-third of those who attempted the voyage.

The brutality of the Thai fishermen who preyed on these vessels was quite shocking, and at first the Thai government, reluctant to receive large boatloads of refugees, did little to stop the killing, raping, and looting that was so often the fate of those trying to escape. In 1981, the year the United Nations launched its anti-piracy programme, 1,100 attacks were recorded. One of the most effective laws introduced by the $2.6 million programme, which was financed by the USA and ten other countries including the UK, was that all 15,000 Thai fishing boats were required to have numbers prominently displayed on their bows, and their crews were photographed on leaving harbour. The photographs were then circulated to refugee camps and other ports in an attempt to identify the pirates. The programme reduced the number of attacks as it deterred all but the most hardened criminals. However, it also resulted in even greater loss of life as the hard-core pirates attempted to kill every witness to their attacks.

Eventually, Vietnam agreed to take back any Boat People who wanted to return, and not punish them. As a result of this initiative, during the 1990s the exodus all but ceased, but not before it had created a refugee crisis of international proportions in places such as Hong Kong and Malaysia.

The term Boat People was also applied to asylum seekers from Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere, who during the 1990s paid smugglers to take them by sea to Australia. Four thousand one hundred and seventy-five arrived in Australia between July 1999 and July 2000 and a further 4,141 arrived during the following twelve months. In one, well-publicized, incident in August 2001 the Norwegian container ship Tampa picked up 433 mainly Afghan asylum seekers from their sinking vessel off the Indonesian coast, the captain citing his obligation to do so under the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea. Both Australia and Indonesia refused them permission to land and eventually they were dispersed to other countries.

Bibliography

Cargill, M. (ed.), Voices of the Vietnamese Boat People: Nineteen Narratives of Escape and Survival (2001).

boat people (Vietnam) A term given to around one million refugees who fled Vietnam after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, largely in overcrowded and unseaworthy boats. The exodus of mostly Chinese people, who, as the country's major business community, had the most to lose after the takeover of South Vietnam by the Communist north, was more often than not permitted by the state in return for some extortionate payment. It peaked in 1979–82, though during the late 1980s thousands were still leaving Vietnam each month. In 1985 the UN High Commission for Refugees negotiated a Rescue at Sea Resettlement Scheme, wherein thirteen member nations, including the USA, Japan, and Canada, agreed to take a yearly quota of refugees. Furthermore, the Thai navy was commissioned to prevent pirates robbing and sinking boats. From the late 1980s, an increasing number of refugees were of Vietnamese origin, with a significant number from the north. Wealthier refugees were successfully resettled, but many poorer ones ended in camps (e.g. in Hong Kong) waiting to be resettled in Vietnam.

boat people term used to describe the Indochinese refugees who fled Communist rule after the Vietnam War (1975) in small boats and the many ethnic Chinese who left Vietnam similarly after China's invasion of Vietnam in 1979. More than one million people became refugees. Many perished, and others, upon reaching other Southeast Asian countries, discovered they could not remain permanently. The United States, Canada, and other nations accepted most of the refugees in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Although people continued to flee Vietnam into the mid-1990s, nearly all later boat people have been regarded as economic, not political, refugees. In 1996 the United Nations decided to end the financing of the camps holding the remaining 40,000 boat people, and Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines returned most of the remaining refugees to Vietnam. The term boat people has also been used to describe political and economic refugees from other areas, such as Haiti, who fled their homelands by similar means.

boat people Refugees that flee their country by sea to avoid political persecution, or to find greater economic opportunities. The term is closely associated with South Vietnamese refugees, of whom, since 1975, c.150,000 sailed to Hong Kong and other Southeast Asian countries. Other boat people include Cubans and Haitians attempting to reach the USA, usually Florida.

boat peo·ple • pl. n. refugees who have left a country by sea, in particular the Vietnamese who fled in small boats to Hong Kong, Australia, and elsewhere after the conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam in 1975.