PEOPLE

Th Bad! AopZ6
mckcd our m~ night to a new economic zone in Kicn Gisng province. I was
unnble to find out exactly where hry were. When my father arranged for
us to go inm hiding he said we should make every endeavour m lcaw Vicmam 7
and thmt is why we escaped by boat on 24 March 1979.
'
Ong Tin Loe was a 17-year-old Chincse high-school student in
Cholon. His parents were general merchants. After the communist '.,
mkeover in 1975, they stwkpilcd impolred gods, prices of which
were shooting up, so that they could sell gradually at a gmd profit.
The shop was seized with its contents in March 1978. His father
avoided an NEZ by becoming m approved state worker in a cooperative
making wheat noodles. However, in September 1978, Lac
was instructed to register for military service. Besides poor living I,,
conditions, suweillance ('whatever you did people watched you') :i.
and r desire to study medicine, which he did not think he could do
as a Chinese in Vietnam, Lm said he left for Malaysia because he ,!:,
was determined to avoid the draft. 'We Chincse don't want to fight ii.
Chin=. We also hate the communists and don't want to fight for r
the mmmunists.' Bur wasn't Chins communist? 'Well, they ur 4,
closcr to us, When war broke my family felt a little bit of sympathy ' :
for China. After all my grandmother is in China. Grandfather used ,;I;.
to say to us: *China is our home. Vietnam is only our second home"! '/
Tran Xuong, fifty-six, was a wealthy Chinese rice trader with a
mill near Soc Tnng in the Mekong delta province of Hau Giang.
He had seven1 dozen hectares of good farming land that belonged '
to his wife, and houses in both Soe Trang and the Saigon area. His
iron-grey hair is mopped short and he has a gold tooth that gleams
,
when he smiles, Ncither he nor his family of four boys and six girls
were under pressure to go to an NEZ because they had established
themselves as farmen on one of the family plots of land. Beforc he c'.
left Vietnam he took steps to safeguard his property by puning in s
relatives. He was furious about the loss of his rice mill shortly after
the communist takeover in 1975,
We grew rice on a m+hccmrc plot, iust enough for ou~lves. Wha's thc
use of growing more if hey take it from you? They say they an going to
give you w much in cash bur they never do. They speak very nicely but jus
give you bits of paper. For my mill they gave me an IOU ~aying the money
could be cotltcted from the local communist parry ofice, If I'd aid, I'd have
.;I
1
been m#d. The drr acvenl k -bed me as a 'capimlist' or an
'exploitiw eppitalisf. I couldat he in Vkmam any Ionwrger. We had M
future, I WPS fed up with wor)elap in h &Ids and then having to go in the
evehip to liwn to what the wrnmwha had to say in political mcctinp!
LC Chi Bang, a 28-year-old repairman from Cholon, set sail for
Ausmlh on 26 March 1979, He left with his two brothers and thm
sisters bemuse the savings his parents had given him in March 1978
were mning out. They had handed over fifty taels of gold (worth
about $15 000) before leaving Vietnam with his younger sister, 'In
a year we had spent ten taels on food and living, I also had to bribe
cadres who came to our house eveiy month so that my brother and
I wwldnt have to do military service!
Being officially regarded as unemployed inmased the risk of
being sent to m NEZ. Diminished opportunities for teniaiy education,
k u r thw of less privileged backgrounds got precedence,
meant many sons and daughters of the rich or middle class joined
the unemployed, Thm on declining incomes and without oflicially
approvtd occupations, if they resisted pressure to mnsfer them from
the overcrowded cities to the countryside, were lkblt to have their
ration cards withdrawn. This inmastd their reliance on the black
market, where costs of fwd and other basic necessities were many
times higher than the government price, so that their savings
dwindled even fa#er,
One of the early arrivals at the Le Minh Xuan NHZ outside Saigon,
where 200 families lived, was s Vianamest Catholic family of
eleven who moved there from Ho Chi Minh City under pressure
in August 1976. Nguyen Manh Hung, twenty-four, said a bus was
supplied to take them there, together with some furniture and
clothing. They were given a thousand square metres of land for their
own use, some farm implements, and corrugated iron sheeting for
a house. The land had not ken clewed and the soil was poor. They
eied to grow rice, then turned to pineapples. Supposed to be completely
self-sufhicnt, they were given no fd, even to start with.
However, families poorer than his, who could nor afford to buy rice
on the black market, were given f d by the government. Young
people could do various jobs in the NEZ, being paid a maximum of
nine kilograms of rice a month. After some time the family decided
to quit. Leaving their parents, who had rubercuIosis and could get
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