PEOPLE

The Boat Peoph
There was no bloodbath. We hive shown our humanity to them, our clemency.
But hey could not stay, Why? knuae they hsve guilty conscicnm
and . . . they were used to thc easy life under American aid. Thy cannot
work hard, so they would like ro go . . . The second group of refugees w
the Chinese. They arc matly big businefismen and they don't like h c sociilia
rcfvrmation of South Vittnam.
An ofiial Vietnamese publication (1978) on the role of ethnic
Chinese in the south:
In the work of wcialist transformation in Viemmm, as in other socialist
cwnuks, including China, wmc years ago, thc abolition of the bour~oiair
as a class is inevimbk. This mnlsformation was carried out in a f~ir find
reasonable way. Most of the Viemam- bourgeois of Chincst origin willingly
accepted it, but naturally a small minority opposed it because of thek
class nature.
US vice president, Walter Mondaie, in a speech to the UNHCR Geneva
conference on 21 July 1979:
[Vjcmam] is failing to ensure the human rights of its people. Its callous and
irresponsible policies are compelling countiess citizens to foitsak eveming
they treasure, to risk their lives, and to flee into the unknown.
A spoktsman for China's rninievy of foreign affairs on 16 June 1979:
In the fiMl nnalysis, the problem of Indo-Chinex refugees has arben snlely
as a result of the fact that the Vietnamese government is pursuing u pvlicy
of agplision and war. Aftcr the end of their wur of resisuncr against US
aggression, the Viemarnese authorities showed no regard for h e welfare of
their people and failed to turn their attention M healing the wounds of war
and cmbarkng on economic recvnsrruction, To support their war of aggression
in Kampuchea and maintain control in I.ans, they press-ganged their
young people into scrving as cannon-fodder and bled the pcoplc whitc. T,hi~
has ruined the economy and made the peaplc des~itutc. Consequently, large
numbers of Viemarnese inhabitants have had to flee the country.
Canada's immigration minister, Ron Atkey, in a television intcrvicw
on 17 June 1979:
'l'herr ia a cave ot' genocide hcrc against the ethnic Chine* and tn a cenain
extent rhe entrcprencurial class in Viemam.
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Vietnam's secretary of state for foreign affaits, Nguyen Co Thach,
in an interview with uer published on 12 August 1979:
Many of the boat pcople in MRAN ewnuieb were acrually from Chini. More
than 100 000. They [the Peking authoriticsJ ate very clever. We have arrested
some ship from China going to South-East Asia . . . many pcopk do not
nali7.c this because the Chinese from Chinn are the ame as from Vicmarn.
Australia's immigration minister, Michael MacKellar, in an address
to the LIUCR Geneva conference on 21 July 1979:
We are again cmlled to consider one of the most inhuman and unnecesury
tiagedies in the mlendar of human suffering.
'Thc leader of the French socialist party, Frangois Mitterand, in a
television interview on 21 June 1976:
We muxt nm let a new holocaust hap~n
under our eyer.
Sweden's foreign minister, Hans Blix, in a statement to the uNHCR
Geneva conference on 20 July 1979:
The prtsent dangerous and inhuman edus should be r~uhstituted by orderly
dtpamm. We aw.1 m the government of Vktnam m pursue thi line of
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, action . . , My government is awarc of the immense ditficulties which the
gvvernmmt of Vietnam i facing in rebuilding the country after the ravags
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1 of' war md in securing sufficient f d for it5 peopk after sevcral puiods of
natural cutasvophers . . . The chaotic ouflow of people i~ not totally unrelated
10 hat desperate situation.
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The backgmund to the exodus from the south was bad we~thcr, P
deteriorating economy, and pressures from outside, including conflict
with Kampuchea. In particular, Hanoi authorities found they
could not compete with the resilient private sector in Ho Chi Minh
City, where in early 1978 they estimated that only 30 per cent of
all gods in circulation were under state control and profitecring,
hoarding, speculation and graft were rampmnt, On 23 March 1978,
all 'rrading and business operations' of 'bourgeois' elements wtrc
abolished. Small merchants wuuld be permitted on a temporary basis
to retail gmds not controlled by the mtc, but the effect of the edict