S. E. Asia: Part 3 Who are the boat people'?

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Vietnamese bureaucrats received in Moscow Othere thev allege are ele- Hn Chi Minh Citu where they Place your order now. Send your name and address together with £2.70 to Folrose Books 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 IHR.

Who are the "boat people" , and what do they reveal about the nature and policies of the Vietnamese Communist Party which since the defeat of the American imperialists in 1975 has ruled both the North and South of Vietnam?

The great majority of the boat people' have come from South Vietnam, especially from Ho Chi Minh i City (formerly Saigon).

Mass emigration from South Vietnam predates the defeat of the imperialists. It accelerated during the last days of the imperialist retreat, as imperialism's collaborators and agents fled from the vengeance they deserved and expected.

After that a steady stream of refugees continued to leave Vietnam until the present enormous upsurge of emigration began in the earty months of 1978.

Sudden change

It coincided with and was very much affected by a sudden change in the policy of the Vietnamese CP.

After the collapse of the pro-imperialist regime and the US army Hanoi moved very cautiously in relation to capitalist property in the South.

In particular a sizeable private sector remained in the area of distribution.

In May 1978, however, the leadership moved towards a rapid political and economic integration of North and South.

This included expropriation of virtually all private property in the South, down to small-scale wholesalers and retailers, very many of whom were Chinese by national origin.

It was that measure; and the way it was evidently carried out, which set in train the flight to sea of the boat people.

At first almost all the boat people were of Chinese origin (traders and their families) and as recently as two months ago observers were saying that 80% were still Chinese, though the Vietnamese component is continuing to rise.

One million How many refugees there been up till now?

The estimate made by the UN High Commission for Refugees is that since 1975 one million refugees have left Vietnam.

About 250,000 of these have gone, often by land, to China, and some of those probably did not regard themselves as permanent residents of Vietnam in the first place.

Most of the rest have left the country by sea-often in small, unsafe and invariably overcrowded boats.

250,000 of these have been admitted to countries outside Asia, mostly to the USA.

At least 350,000 are now in "transit camps" • sometimes in appalling conditions, in the countries of ASEAN or in Hong Kong.

Tens of thousands have probably died at sea from disease, starvation and drowning.

Conference

The Vietnamese government at the July Geneva conference on the boat people la conference which it began by denouncing and ended up by collaborating with fully) said that it expected the eventual total of emigrants would be 3 million, of whom 1½ million would be of Chinese origin.

The Vietnamese government also says that of those who have left so far only 40,000 have done so legally and that, despite their efforts; they have been unable to control the rest.

Their implication is that the rest have left illegally in order to avoid paying the taxes on emigrants imposed by the government.

Some emigrants, however, present a different story.

Semi-legal

They say that most refugees leave semi-legally in the sense that they "fix" their departure with a member of the bureaucracy who personally pockets some or all of the money the refugee pays.

That Long, a former mathematics teacher, quoted recently in Le Monde claims that he had to pay $3,000 to be allowed to leave.

He also claimed that in total $3 billion had been taken from emigrants in this way in the first six months of 1979.

The Vietnamese bureaucracy and its allies claim that the refugees are almost entirely former capitalists and traders disgruntled at the socialism of a regime which has nationalised their property.

MIu VIV ments which have collaborated with the imperialists and who represent a permanent block on the revolution and whose fate (by implication) should be no serious concern of socialists.

•No answer The problem with this explanation is that it doesn't answer why one million people are prepared to embark in conditions of obvious danger with no guarantee of any destination other than a refugee camp or worse.

According to the Hanoi bureaucracy all this is 'independent of our will"

Yet it has waged a consistent campaign against Chinese residents which is driving many of them through fear to pay large sums to leave the country in the most dangerous conditions.

It is beyond the bounds of belief that as many as 1½ million Chinese and the same number of Vietnamese are irredeemable exploiters or imperialist collaborators.

Yet this is the gist of the Vietnamese bureaucracy's version of events.

Fifteen The three million they expect to leave amount to 15% of the population of the South and 75% of the population of IVI VILy , mostly come from.

Of course, that is not to deny the fact that the social environment created, particularly in Saigon, by imperialism was one extremely hostile to any kind of progressive social transformation.

To hundreds of thousands, corruption and collaboration had become a way of life.

• There were one million soldiers in the ranks of the old Heng Samrin South Vietnamese puppet army and economic life was in ruins.

3½ million were unemployed in the South and corruption was rife.

The North Vietnamese Stalinist bureaucracy, faced with this situation, held back on the integration of North and South, attempted to remove 1½ the countryside and rounded up tens of thousands of South Vietnamese into reeducation centres.

Bureaucratic But in carrying out these policies the bureaucracy did not base itself on the trimphant mobilisations of the masses which had helped defeat the imperialists; it attempted to impose in the South an extension of the bureaucratic Stalinist rule in the North.

As a result, repressive neasures have been applied not inly to reactionary elements of he old South Vietnamese ociety but also against any ection of the masses aspiring to ndependence of the bureaucracy Even though everything has been complicated by the imperialist economic blockade and the Chinese invasion, the policies of the bureaucracy are to a great extent responsible for the fact that the basic material problems of the masses are not being solved.

One reason that the supply of basic foods and other goods is becoming even tighter is the problems of maintaining the vast Vietnamese armies of occupation in Laos (50,000 troops) and in Kampuchea, where it was reported last week that Vietnamese forces would be expanded to a staggering 200,000-half the number of US troops in Indo-China at the peak of the war!

200,000 occupying troops to police a Kampuchean population of 4 million is hardly evidence of the alleged popularity' of the invaders and the puppet government under Heng Samrin.

for In Vietnam itself the question of the refugees and potential refugees is something which the bureaucracy is using to answer its unpopularity and Its material problems at home.

•First, they can be set up as a mass "foreign" presence on which blame can be deflected.

Second, their property can be confiscated, thus easing the personal material problems of sections of the bureaucracy as well as the more general material problems off the country.

Third, the bureaucracy at the Geneva conference made a deal with the imperialists that prospective emigrants land there are still two million of them) would be placed in "departure camps" in Vietnam itself under joint United Nations and Vietnamese supervision to await transport.

In this way the advantages which the bureaucracy derives from its treatment of the refugees can continue, but without the international opprobrium.

This way the imperialists, too, solve a major problem.

Embarassed

Because although they have systematically exploited the plight of the boat people for anti-communist propaganda purposes, they have also been embarassed by the presence of hundreds of thousands of refugees whom they "support" but are not prepared to take in.

Since the Geneva conference the flow of emigrants has been reduced due to preventive measures taken by the Vietnamese.

Severe sentences, including one death sentence, have been imposed on illegal emigrants in the last few weeks.

It is very hard to escape the conclusion that the present treatment of the refugees has nothing to do with the preservation of socialism, but everything to do with the preservation of the power of the counter-revolutionary Vietnamese Stalinist bureaucracy ECO DIT.

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