PEOPLE

motor-biker. But we couldn't get a decent price for mything - the people
who were buying agreed Morehand to keep prices low. . . we left Viemam
from a point eight kilomttrts outside of Haiphong at 4 am on 25 April.
Likc many HOP, Khai expressed a certain disdain for the governmat:
I've been involved in propugandl work for twenty years - that's what cultuial
work is: mobilizing the troops workers or whoever. I gut fed up with
changing the line every time the government made a new decision. Rut you
have to understand the mentality of people in the Viemamtse government
- they've been promoted not because of thcir cducutional level, but becausc
they are from worker or pwr peasant background.
Neither Khai nor Lien had ever thought of leaving bcfore, Said
Lien:
I never believed this would happcn to us. When pplt began to leave last
ycnr 1 didn't even consider going. All my nine brothers and sisters went to
China. Three of them have already made it here, to Hong Kong. I expKt
he others will come too. When I left this year, the people in thc cultud
group wcrc very sad. They said thcy did not agree with the ncw vlicy, but
had to carry it out. They said thcy hoprd I'd understand . , .
Le Van Dung, a Chinese who belonged to the Victnamesc communist
movement, was born in 1930 - 'the same year as the [Vietnamese
communist] party'. He would not say exactly what his work
was. 'I joined the party in 1950. At that time I was involved in politial
and military activities with workers in Haiphong . . ! Like some
other expelled members, anny officers (one an artillery expert
trained in the Soviet Union), and senior government oficialii, he was
extremely hitter. On onc boat, a group of them ripped up their prry
membership cards and threw the bits into the sea as thcy left Vietnam's
territorial waters. Dung said, 'We fought for the fatherland,
we sacrificed, and now we're king rhrown out . . . I have no skills
- where do I go?'
For some of the Hoa from northern Vietnam, the forced dep~rcures
were a chance they had been awaiting for years. For others -
the fishermen, peasants and noodle-makers - it was a brutal turn of
events which left them uprcotcd and bewildcrcd. Why did it happen
so suddenly and in such a drastic way immediately after thc Chinese
Exodus
invarion? In Vietnamese pamphlets published soon aktr the China
war, mention was made of Hoa who left Vietnam in 1978 but returned
in 1979 - as guides or in guerilla units with invading Chinese
forces, At a big meeting in Hanoi in mid-March that was organized
j
by the public security dcpartmcnt and addressed by a senior security :
official, Hoa cadres, party members and officials were given details
of'what the Vietnamese guvernment claimed were acts of treason by
e considerabie number of Hoa (including military officers and party
officials) in the areas taken over by rhc Chinese. Several of the refugees
in Hong Kong apparently attended this meeting, but were
studiously vague about it. This may be because attendance at the
mceting would mark them as having ken fairly senior bureaucrats,
intellectuals or army officers and such status, implying communist
party membership, would prejudice their resertlement chances in the
west, What follows is an account primarily provided by onc refugee,
with supporting evidtncc from others.
The meeting, which was in the Kim Mon theatre in the centre
of Hanoi and lasted two or three hours, began with a lengthy review
of' Sino-Vietnamese relations and an expression of the Hanoi government's
gratitude towards the people of China and the Hoa of
Vietnam for the aid they had given Vietnam in the past, Recently,
however, wid a senior security official, the 'gang of reactionaries'
in Peking had joined hands with US imperialists and were opposing
the wialist camp. They had provoked a war along Vietnam's
borders and were trying to force the Vietnamese into submission.
Vietnam had to resist and a dangerous situation had arisen. A numher
of Hoa serving in the security forces and the army had turned
thcir guns on their fellow-countrymen. Some of the traitors were
party officials. The head of the public wcuriry for Lang Son, for
cxarnple, had descncd to the enemy at a critical time. Other Hoa,
the speaker continued, led Chinese troops to bunkers where Virtnameee
cadres were hiding and were thus responsible for their massacre.
Still others showed the Chinese the Incation of Vietnamese supply
dumps and other important installations. Some Hoa were forced
to co-operate at gun point; many uthers, howcver, had betrayed Vietnam
willingly,
The government had therefore decided that Vietnamese of Chincse
origin in responsible positions in the parry, the armed forces, the