Nearly 40 years after hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese fled the
country's Communist regime by boat, a growing number are taking to the
water again.
This year alone, 460 Vietnamese men,
women and children have arrived on Australian shores — more than in the
last five years combined. The unexpected spike is drawing fresh
scrutiny of Hanoi's deteriorating human rights record, though Vietnam's
flagging economy may also explain why migrants have been making the
risky journey.
The latest boat carrying Vietnamese
cruised into Australia's Christmas Island one morning last month,
according to witnesses on the shore. The hull number showed it was a
fishing vessel registered in Kien Giang, a southern Vietnamese province
more than 2,300 kilometers (1,400 miles) from Christmas Island, which is
much closer to Indonesia than it is to the Australian mainland.
Many
Vietnamese who have reached Australia have been held incommunicado. The
government doesn't release details about their religion and place of
origin within Vietnam, both of which might provide some hint about why
they are seeking asylum.
Truong Chi Liem, reached
via telephone from the Villawood Immigration Detention Center on the
outskirts of Sydney, would not reveal details of his case but said, "I'd
rather die here than be forced back to Vietnam."
The
23-year-old left Vietnam five years ago but who was detained en route
in Indonesia for 18 months. He said Vietnamese simply looking to make
more money shouldn't attempt a boat journey, but he also said, "If a
person is living a miserable life, faced with repression and threats by
the authorities there, then they should leave."
Some
Vietnamese reach Australia via Indonesia, following the same route that
the far more numerous asylum seekers from South Asia and the Middle
East have blazed for more than a decade. Others set sail from Vietnam
itself, a far longer and riskier journey.
In
separate statements, the Australian and Vietnamese governments said the
overwhelming majority or all of the arrivals were economic migrants,
which would make them ineligible for asylum. Several Vietnamese
community activists in Australia and lawyers who have represented
asylum-seekers from the Southeast Asian country dispute that
categorization or raised questions over the screening process Australia
uses.
Those activists and lawyers also raise
concerns about what will become of the migrants, saying that while
Australia doesn't want to keep them, Vietnam doesn't want to take them
back.
"Vietnam's attitude is that, 'These are people
who will never be our friends, so why should we take them back?'" said
Trung Doan, former head of the Vietnamese Community in Australia, a
diaspora group.
In a statement, the Vietnamese government said it is "willing to cooperate with concerned parties to resolve this issue."
Asylum-seekers
are a sensitive issue for Vietnam because their journeys undermine
Communist Party propaganda that all is well in the country. They also
hark back to the mass exodus after the Vietnam War.
Those
Vietnamese who fled persecution by the victorious Communists in the
immediate aftermath of the war triggered a global humanitarian crisis.
Their plight resonated with the U.S. and its allies and they were
initially given immediate refugee status. In 1989, they had to prove
their cases pursuant to the Geneva Convention, and acceptance rates
quickly fell as result. Nearly 900,000 Vietnamese did make it out by
boat or over land, with the United States, Canada and Australia
accepting most of them.
Vietnam remains a one-party
state that arrests and hands down long prison sentences to government
critics, including bloggers and Roman Catholic activists. Human Rights
Watch alleges torture in custody is routine. Christian groups have
reported on alleged suspicious deaths in custody.
Most independent human rights activists say that repression has increased over the last two years.
Little is known about the background of those that have made the trip this year.
At
least some of those who have arrived in the recent past are Roman
Catholics who took part in a protest near a cathedral in the capital,
Hanoi, said Kaye Bernard, a refugee advocate who has met some arrivals
from Hanoi. Others are said to be involved in land disputes with local
authorities.
"I don't think you can generalize but
there has been an increase in repression in Vietnam. The sentences are
getting longer. There is more fear," said Hoi Trinh, an Australia lawyer
of Vietnamese descent who heads an organization helping asylum-seekers.
"If more people are more fearful, then more of them will flee."
Peter
Hansen, a lawyer and Vietnam expert who advised in some appeals
involving recent arrivals from Vietnam, said the small number of cases
he was aware of didn't involve intellectuals, bloggers or political
dissidents most targeted in the current campaign by the government. But
he cautioned that current Australian guidelines on the validity of
claims from Vietnam didn't take into account the reality of persecution
against certain religious sects in specific parts of the country.
"I
can't account for why there has been a significant increase this year,
but I can tell you now that I'm absolutely certain that there is a
proportion of that number who weren't motivated to come here for
economic reasons," he said.
Neighboring countries
like Cambodia have continued to receive small numbers of asylum-seekers
since the 1990s. Many thousands of Vietnamese have left the country to
work in Asia or beyond, either illegally or as exported labor. Many
don't return after their contracts end.
Australia
appears to be the destination of choice, but the country is already
facing a record number of asylum-seekers this year. Under public
pressure, the Australian government has made it more difficult for
people to be considered for asylum and often detained migrants on
isolated islands away from lawyers. Critics say Canberra is avoiding its
responsibilities under the United Nations refugee conventions by taking
these measures.
Along with other nationalities, the
Vietnamese are kept in detention, either on the mainland, on Christmas
Island or on the Pacific islands of Nauru and Manus. Families and
unaccompanied children are kept in lower-security detention facilities.
Four Vietnamese, including a teenager, escaped from one such center in
Darwin earlier this week, according to authorities.
Australia's
desire to get tough on Vietnamese arrivals appears to have run into a
problem: The government in Hanoi has shown no interest in accepting the
asylum-seekers, according to activists and lawyers.
Australia
can't simply put the migrants on the first plane to Hanoi. They need to
have travel documents issued to them by Vietnamese authorities, who
must first confirm their identities.
Of the 101
Vietnamese who arrived in Australia in 2011, only six have so far been
returned to Vietnam. Very few, if any, have been granted asylum,
according to lawyers and activists.
Các nữ nhân viên bị bắt bò giữa phố trước sự chứng kiến của người đi đường
