PEOPLE

A d a
How many boat ptople pcrished in the four years or so to
middle of 19793 One of the most often quoted figures is up to
per ccnt. In June 1978, the US assistant xcretary of state for €8
Asian and Pacific affain, Richard Holbroke, said in a speech
many refugees 'set out in rickety boats with few supplies, and
mmtcs art that only half make it to another port'. Australia's mint
for immigration, Michael MacKellar, said sevml times be^
April and July 1979, that about half the boat people perished
He wid this conclusion was drawn from talks with refuge
intelligence sources. We are looking at a death rate of be
100 000 and 200 000 in the last four years'.
Some estimates ranged even higher. They concentrated on w
was undoubtedly the special horror, and susceptibility to mishap
the boats ,that brought tens of thousands of Chinese from south
Vietnam after March 1978. These wdcn vessels wcre scld
suited for a sea pawge and often grossly overloaded, often ha
as many as 600 or 700 men, women and children crammed into
or three layen below deck. The passengers were virtually entom
amid the noise and fumes of the engine, and the dreadful pres
human bodies, for as long as the voyage lssted. Air was forced i
the holds through funnels from the deck.
In July 1979, the US state department handed a 'dossier'
journalists alleging Vietnamese government complicity in the ex
of refugee^. One of the documents appended to this report qu
comments of 'a western observer in Hanoi' to the effect that Chi
in Viemam estimated that about 70 per cent of refugees wcrc n
being lost at sea. This high rate of loss was attributed to the u
smaller and less senworthy vessels, compounded by the use of 5
diesel engines, originally imported for light work in the: delta wa
which wcre breaking duwn or exploding during thc lung
journeys,
We know that 292 315 pcople who left by boat from Victna
between May 1975 and mid-1979 reached other countrica. Rut no 4
one knows, although Vietnamese authorities may have a rough id
how mny people actually set out in boats. Nonethclcss, rstima
of an overall death rate of 50 per cent, or wen higher, appear to be
exsggcrated. On the basis uf the numbers that arrived, this woul
have meant a figure of nearly I50 000 lost.
1
Refugee officials and thost knowledgeable about conditions at
*a, agree that the casualty rate among boat people heading for Hong
Kong was low, Unlike the southern route from Viemam, the way
to Hong Kong was not beset with pirates. Moreover, even though
many of the boats th~t
crept towards Hang Kong were powered only
by sail, they stuck close to the const of China and $0 could escape
bad weather and stock up on essential supplies. The refuges in
Hong Kong constituted a sizeable proportion uf the total exodus -
77090 out of 292 315.
Also, many of those boat people forced out to sea, especially by
Malaysia, managed to sneak back. There are documented cases of
at least 500 drownings as a result of Malaysian policy, bur it is clear
that the overwhelming proportion of more than 40000 Indo-
Chinese towed out to sem by the Malaysian navy in the fmt six
munths of 1979 returned to Malaysia or landed in Indonesia, Many
of the boats were towed to within a few hours sailing of Indonesia's
Annmbas Islands, By the end of July, there were 33 000 Indo-
Chinese in camps in these islands, virtually all of them rejected by
Malaysia. Only for a period of a few wceke around mid-1979 was
the Malaysian navy known to be towing rcfugee boats straight out
into the South China Sea, rather than towards Anamhas or other
islands of the Indonesian archipelago.
Spokesmen for western governments, such as those of the United
States and Australia, may have felt it politic m heighten the tr~gedy
uf the boat pople in order to generate international sympathy for
thc refugees and win domestic support for rescttlemcnt programs.
They may also have wanted to blacken Vietnam's already tarnished
image on the human rights issue and, perhaps, justify their own policies
of hostility to communist Vietnam.
However, the diffcrencw betwen several and many thousands,
while reducing the scale of the tragedy, does not diminish its force.
Vl'hilc dismissing as excessively inflated claims of a 50 per cent death
rate among boat people, one experienced western official said he
hclicved drat between ten and fiftecn pcr cent of refugees leaving
Vietnam on small boats were lost at sea. This means that some 30 000
to 40 OCK) pcople died.