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Tui tri'ch la.i cu?a AP:
=====quote
Boat People Return to Vietnam 

By IAN STEWART 
Associated Press Writer 
Monday, March 24, 1997 6:07 pm EST 


ABOARD VIETNAM AIRLINES FLIGHT 7911 (AP) -- She gambled everything to
escape Vietnam nine years ago: home, family, dignity. In the end, she lost
it all. 

At Hong Kong's Kai Tak airport, Nguyen Thi Hien said goodbye to nine years
behind barbed wire and climbed aboard Vietnam Airlines charter flight 7911
to Vietnam. 

She, her husband, Hoang Duc Hung, and their three children were among the
last of the boat people whose saga gripped the world's attention in the
1970s and 1980s. 

Now, having finally surrendered to the reality that no other country wanted
them, they were getting onto an airplane for the first time in their lives,
and going home with less than they started with. 

Convinced almost to the last that the family would get asylum, Hien had
given most of their belongings to other families who chose to return months
ago. 

``We packed up everything we had in the camp, but there's not much. We
don't have much left,'' said Hien as she grappled with the mysteries of the
seat belt during Friday's flight. 

Hien is 34, a short woman with sad, down-turned eyes, whose odyssey began
in February 1988 when her husband, a ship welder, was out of work and
Vietnam's communist economy was sinking. 

They sold their home for $450 worth of gold, enough to buy the family
passage on a leaky fishing boat along with 60 other people. 

Her in-laws vowed to disown them if they left, and they haven't been heard
from since the family set off from a beach just north of their hometown of
Haiphong. 

``I don't know what they're going to do when we get back,'' Hien said.
``It's very sad. Everything is gone now. But we had to go back.'' 

After drifting through the South China Sea, the overburdened boat broke up
just off a Chinese beach. For six months they lived on the beach, begging
Chinese fishermen for money, food and passage to Hong Kong. 

The next nine years were spent in the Whitehead Detention Center, one
family among thousands waiting, filling out forms, answering questions,
seesawing between hope and despair, finally opting for ``voluntary
repatriation'' and a U.N. cash grant worth $400. 

Cabin attendants, accustomed after 279 U.N. repatriation flights to dealing
with first-time fliers, handed out extra air sickness bags as the Airbus
and its 120 home-bound boat people taxied toward the runway. 

At liftoff, Hien got her first and probably last glimpse of Hong Kong's
glittering skyscrapers, a world apart from the squalor she was used to. 

The Vietnamese had never been welcome in Hong Kong. As their number grew to
60,000, the clamor went up to get rid of them. They were viewed as a burden
on the taxpayer, the fallout from a crisis not of Hong Kong's making. 

Now only 6,000 are left, and Hong Kong aims to be rid of them before China
takes over the British colony on July 1. 

Hien sank into her seat and closed her eyes. Tears rolled down the cheeks
of her youngest son, Hoang Doanh, who was born in Whitehead. His father
cradled the 2-year-old in his arms and fed him milk. 

Watching her children grow up in the drab, spartan camp was tough on Hien.
When Hoang Thi Thao, 13, and Hoang Thin, 11, were asked to write an essay
on wildlife, they didn't know what a water buffalo was, or where birds fly
to. 

``They'd only seen the birds fly above the camp,'' Hien said. ``They didn't
know they landed. They only knew they flew away.'' 

During the two-hour flight, she gave voice to her misgivings: Where would
they live? Find work? How would their family receive them? 

Vietnam guarantees that returning boat people will not be punished. But
those who left to find better job prospects are often perceived at home as
opportunists who deserted Vietnam in its darkest hour. 

``We don't care when they left, or care why. If they don't act against the
government, they are most welcome to return,'' Pham Khac Lam, vice-chairman
of the National Committee for Overseas Vietnamese, said in a recent
interview. 

For part of the flight, the cabin was filled with excited chatter and the
sheer thrill of flying. But as the plane descended toward Hanoi and
sparkling rice paddies came into view, the passengers fell silent. 

On the ground, unsmiling immigration and customs officers processed the
returnees back into Vietnam and put them on buses to relocation camps in
Hanoi, where they stayed for a few days before moving to their home towns. 

Inside the shabby terminal, Hien blended into a sea of confused people
having one form after another shoved at them. 

Holding little Doanh in one hand and a small canvas bag in the other, she
pushed deeper into the crowd. Her red-and-black jacket popped briefly into
view once more, and then she was gone. 



© Copyright 1997 The Associated Press