Boat People 投奔怒海 by Ann Hui
The story of the Vietnamese Boat People at the time
when the Northeners overran the South is told by Ann
Hui through this drama.
The drama centers around 3 people, a Japanese journalist
played by George Lam,a Vietnamese street orphan,and a
potential refugee played by Andy Lau.
In this story the journalist tries to get an inside view of the
going-ons during this period when not much knowledge
was available to the outside world.This he does by tracking
the daily life of the street urchin.
I will not here continue about the drama as the story tells
itself through the images.
Historically when the South fell to the North thereby re-uniting
Vietnam,there was a period of orientation by the Communist
government on the Southerners,with many middle class and
educated people being forced to labour camps or farms to do
manual work just like any Communist peasant in the North.
Many of those affected in the South were professionals and
businessmen already wealthy and successful in the previously
capitalist South.The program was similar to Mao's Cultural
Revolution whereby former Capitalists and intellectuals were
forced to do hard labour in rural camps alongside workers
and peasants to re-orientate and re-educate them so that they
can accept communal social life and Socialism.There could also
have been retributions after the war.
This was in sharp contrast to Kampuchea where the Communists
started a reign of terror called the killing fields exterminating
intellectuals,Muslims ,capitalists, anyone remotely Chinese instead
of re-educating them.
Meanwhile in the North ethnic Chinese were repatriated to
China for some reason.A short war broke out between the North
and China,as has happened many times in the past.This could have
caused alarm amongst the Chinese in the South who saw no future
in Vietnam whatever the ideology.Chinese from the North returning
to China had to stay in atrocious conditions in the then already over-
crowded and very poor China,whose own citizens dreamt of a life
of riches by swimming to Hong Kong.
Many took to leaving the country by means of paying their way out
using gold bars to buy passage on flimsy boats to cross the seas
to safer lands.
Thousands must have died from drowning and many were robbed
by Thai pirates.Most landed in lands like Phillipines,Malaysia,
Indonesia where the hosts provided shelter for them by confining
them to camps whilst waiting for a Third Country to adopt them,
the process of re-locating these refugees took decades and those
not relocated were sent back to Vietnam.
To their credit the Western countries wasted no time in accepting
many of the refugees with countries like Australia, Canada,USA,
Hong Kong,Japan and even conservative countries like UK,France,
etc. taking their share of the quotas.
The then Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir was asked why he
would not absorb some of the refugees into Malaysia just like the
Muslims fleeing Kampuchea.His reply was that because most of
the refugees were ethnic Chinese and that there were already too
many ethnic Chinese in Malaysia already.He even threatened to
push back the refugee boats back to sea and shoot them if the West
did not hasten their efforts to accept them.
One of the Ministers Ghazali Shafie when interviewed on BBC as to
why Malaysia took such a hardline on the refugees had this to say :
" Chinese people are a big problem in Malaysia,they are like the
negroes in the USA and we have enough of them already here what
more accepting more from Vietnam.".At that time the Chinese made
up 40 % of the population and were the economic backbone, today
their numbers have been systematically reduced to about 25 % and
no longer an economic force or a threat to the natives in their agenda
of re-claiming their "sovereignity".
I believe that the refugees settled well into their adopted countries
to become upright and productive citizens,whether Vietnamese or
ethnic Chinese , as compared to many other types of refugees.
This movie ends at the point when the refugee boat is about to
leave Vietnam and the tragic story of those who succeeded in leaving
is told here.
There are many lessons to be learned from this episode in history
and this movie is one of few which have recorded part of it in the
form of a fictional drama.
I will leave value judgements as to what or who is right or wrong
to the reader himself/herself.
I wasn't there with first hand info.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsfLwb4rQVY
About the Chinese in Vietnam :
http://www.ibiblio.org/ahkitj/wscfap/arms1974/Book%20Series/TheImageOfGodIM/IOGIM-vietnam.htm
