Research Paper

A brief introduction to the Boat People

The Boat People were refugees escaping from Vietnam, Laos, and
Cambodia in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. As the name suggests, they fled by boat
from their home countries in order to escape the conditions there. In Vietnam,
most of the immigration began after 1975, beginning with the fall of Saigon. While
Americans pulled out, some Vietnamese people connected with them were able
to evacuate too, however, there were many Vietnamese who worked for the
Americans who were told they were going to be evacuated and were instead left
behind.1 One group of Vietnamese translators who had worked for the CIA were
told that they were going to be evacuated from a hotel, and were instead left
behindall of them were killed by the communists.2 For many in the South,
surrendering to the communists was a terrifying prospect after two long and
painful decades of war.3
After the consolidation of power by the North Vietnamese government,
people left Vietnam for a variety of reasons. Between 1975 and 1978, fear of the
North, the threat of re-education camps (where enemies of the state were kept
without sentence under incredibly harsh conditions), and the establishment of the
New Economic Zone (an arid, lifeless region where people were forcibly sent to
cultivate) were the main reasons that people fled. 4 In 1979, many more

1 Nghia M. Vo, The Vietnamese Boat People, 1954 and 1975-1992.

(Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2006), 66.
2 Vo, 66.
3 Vo, 72.
4 Vo, 83-4.

Vietnamese people fled in order to escape the draft and the war with Cambodia. 5
By and large, most people fled Vietnam for economic or political reasons.
In Cambodia, the communist Khmer Rouge took over the country in 1975.
One of their first actions was to evacuate Phnom Penh, a march that left many
deadwith some estimates reaching 400,000 people. 6 In her memoir, Loung
Ung recalls the march from Phnom Penh as a long and arduous one, where she
never had enough time to rest or eat, despite being a child. 7 However, the march
was only the beginning of the suffering. All former government officials and
soldiers were executed, while the rest of the population was essentially put into
work camps.8 According to the New York Times, Cambodia looked like a giant
prison camp with the urban supporters of the former regime being worked to
death on think gruel and hard labor. 9 According to R.J. Hummel, during the
Khmer Rouge regime, Cambodia lost nearly 4,000,000 of its original population
of 7,100,000 people.10 After the war with Vietnam started, still more people
sought to escape.
Laos had a similar story. Following the end of the Vietnam War, Laos
became embroiled in an internal conflict. The Americans had originally backed
the Hmong people against the North Vietnamese and Laotian communists,
5 Vo, 83.
6 Larry Clinton Thompson, Refugee Workers in the Indochina Exodus,
1975-1982. (Jefferson, McFarland & Company, 2010), 40.
7 Loung Ung, First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia
Remembers. (New York: Harper Collins, 2000), 29.
8 Thompson, 41.
9 Thompson, 41.
10 R.J. Hummel, The Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass
Murder since 1900. (Charlottesville, Transaction Publishers,
1997),https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP4.HTM

however they pulled out in Laos as they did in Vietnam. 11 Eventually, without US
support, the Hmong could not stand against the communists and were forced to
flee, most going to camps in Thailand.12
Despite the horrors of what they were escaping from, the escape itself
was not an easy one. Boat People faced re-capture, storms, and starvation out
on the seas.13 However, even more dangerous than the storms were the pirates:
most boats were attacked more than once in a trip by Thai pirates, and many
Boat People were killed, raped, and/or abducted in the attacks. 14 Conditions upon
arrival at the refugee camps were not much better. Many camps lacked basic
sanitation, food and water supplies, and shelter.15 As more and more refugees
poured into the refugee camps, conditions worsened and host countries like
Thailand became less welcoming to letting refugees stay while they waited for
resettlement.16 Fewer and fewer refugees were being let into resettlement
countries like France, Canada, and the United States by 1979. 17 Many refugees
waited for long periods of time in the camps for asylum. Loung Ung waited eight
months in a camp before being relocated to America. 18 Eventually, public interest
in the issue waned, and many refugees were forcibly repatriated, while still others
waited in the camps.19 However, despite that, by 1981, over 1,000,000 refugees
11 Thompson, 48.
12 Thompson, 59.
13 Vo, 111-2.
14 Thompson, 168.
15 Vo,153.
16 Rachel Cohen and Scott Hemphill, No Safe Port in a Storm: The
Plight of Vietnamese Refugees, Harvard International Review 13, no. 4
(1991): 32-35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42760277, 34.
17 Cohen, 33.
18 Ung, 230.
19 Vo, 171.

had been resettled.20 It was a major undertaking by the international community,

one fraught with tension, death, and fearbut 1,000,000 resettled refugees is no
small thing.

20 Thompson, 237.