Preventive Action for Refugee Producing Situations

82 Chapter 3
steady deterioration of asylum practices by some Southeast Asian states,
the Secretary-General appealed on his return to the heads of concerned
governments for their help and cooperation. 164 The Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom responded in a letter of 31 May 1979 to the Secretary-
General, proposing that he convene an international conference to deal with
the problem. 165 In addition, the Tokyo Economic Summit Conference of
industrialized countries issued a statement on 28 June 1979 confirming
their commitment to increase their support for relief and resettlement of
Vietnamese refugees, and also requesting the Secretary-General to convene
a conference to attain concrete results.
In response, the Secretary-General convened a meeting for 20 and 21
July 1979. Sixty-five governments attended, including Vietnam, as well as
observers from several other governments and a number of interested
intergovernmental organizations and nongovernmental organizations. The
meeting resulted in a significant increase in the amount of financial support
and the number of resettlement places offered by countries throughout the
world. 166 One of the demands by the states of the Association of South East
Asian Nations (ASEAN) had been not to be left with a huge residual
caseload of refugees with no other place to go. Both Thailand and Malaysia,
who had been faced with the largest number of refugees, had made
declarations in mid-1979 that no new boat people would be allowed to land
on their shores. Indonesia followed their example, just at the same time as
the Thai authorities were pursuing a policy of returning Kampuchean
refugees who had crossed into Thalland after the Vietnamese invasion. 167
During the July Meeting in Geneva, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
agreed to a proposal, originally put forward by France, 168 to "limit refu-
Kampucheans" remained under the prerogative of the Military Supreme Command,
and were in principle excluded from resettlement abroad.
164 A/34/627," 1979 Meeting on Refugees in SEA," p. 3.
165 A/34/627, "1979 Meeting on Refugees in SEA," p. 4.
166 The final results were: 1.) An increase in resettlement places from 125,000 in
May 1979 to 260,000 at the end of the meeting; 2.) Announcements of
pledges for approximately $160 million in cash and in kind contributions; 3.)
A proposal to set up a $25 million fund to search for durable solutions: 4.) An
offer to accommodate 50,000 refugees in refugee-processing centres; and 5.)
An expansion of the ODP and practical arrangements regarding the problem
of rescue at sea. See A/34/627, "1979 Meeting on Refugees in SEA," p. 7.
167 Milton Osborne, "The Indochinese Refugees: Cause and Effects,"
International Affairs, 56 (1980), p. 47.
168 Gordenker, Refugees in International Politics, p. 158.
Analytical Discussion 83
gee outflow 'for a reasonable period of time.'" 169 With Vietnam consenting
to a moratorium on forced expulsion of its citizens, and other countries
agreeing to pick up the refugee slack, the main actors dealing with the
refugee situation in Southeast Asia forecast a speedy end to the crisis - as
early as the end of 1979. The numbers of arrivals in first asylum countries
did indeed drop dramatically from nearly 55,000 in June to about 2000 per
month by the end of 1979. The ethnic composition of the arrivals reversed
as well, from more than 80 percent Vietnamese of Chinese ethnic origin
before the July meeting to barely 20 percent in September 1979. 17 °
Interviews with each group of Vietnamese boat people newly arriving in
Singapore after being rescued at sea showed that during the period between
the July Geneva Conference and
end of September, most of the refugees arriving in Singapore were ethnic
Vietnamese and only a small percentage ethnic Chinese, a statistic that offers
further strong evidence that the exodus of refugees of Vietnam has been an exodus
controlled by Hanoi and designed to expel Vietnam's Chinese population. 171
With 132,845 departures for resettlement countries during 1979, the
Vietnamese refugee camp population stood at 140,436 in December of that
year. 17 2 Considering how easily the crisis could have degenerated into an
unprecedented and unpredictable situation, jeopardizing regional political
and security interests, the results obtained from the 1979 Geneva Meeting
helped contain the flow of refugees to manageable proportions and defuse
serious tensions. The meeting resulted in international preventive actions
that worked. Even though Vietnam seems to have honored at least for the
"reasonable period of time" its commitment not to generate refugees in
1979, the outflow still continues. It has motivated various governments and
international organizations to keep the situation under close scrutiny, with a
view to developing new responses to it. Among other studies, a survey by
Senator Edward Kennedy's office on the occasion of a mission to Thalland
in 1984 examined the motives for leaving of 471 Vietnamese who had
arrived in Thalland by boat between
__________________
169 Osborne, p. 51.
170 On the hand file of the author.
171 St. Cartmail, p. 234.
172 Margaret Dyer Chamberlain, "Vietnamese Boat People Crisis - Case Study",
(Draft), Lance Clark (ed.) [hereinafter cited as Chamberlain/Clark, "Boat
People Crisis,"] Refugee Policy Group, September 1986, p. 8.