The Indochina Refugee Crisis

Barry Wain

From Foreign Affairs, Fall 1979

Article preview: first 500 of 8,579 words total.

Summary:  Indochina is bleeding. Vietnam, Laos and Kampuchea discharge a massive flow of apparently permanent refugees, on a scale the world has not experienced since World War II. No end is in sight to the flow nor is any political solution visible.

Barry Wain is the diplomatic correspondent for The Asian Wall Street Journal, based in Kuala Lumpur. He is an Australian who has worked in Southeast Asia for many years.

Indochina is bleeding. Vietnam, Laos and Kampuchea discharge a massive flow of apparently permanent refugees, on a scale the world has not experienced since World War II. No end is in sight to the flow nor is any political solution visible.

There is more to the outflow than the aftermath of war-prolonged, bitter and bloody as the 1960-75 conflict was. Of the more than one million persons who have fled or been forced out of Indochina since communist governments took over in 1975, by far the greatest number have left in the last 18 months. Behind the upheaval is Hanoi's determination not only to bring Kampuchea into line and free Laos of dissidents, but to rid its own territory of unwanted elements and carry out the socialist transformation of unified Vietnam without delay. Anti-Chinese feeling is a major factor; Hanoi's approach includes forcing out of Vietnam hundreds of thousands of people considered undesirable in the new society, many of them ethnic Chinese, and in the process exploiting their financial resources to its own benefit. If the policies behind this exodus should be resumed-after the short breathing space apparently gained by the July 1979 Geneva conference-another million or more inhabitants of Vietnam might seek refuge abroad.

Already the refugees have saddled neighboring non-communist nations with serious political, economic, social and security problems. Their presence is potentially explosive in several countries, notably Malaysia and Indonesia, which have Chinese minorities and delicate racial balances. Altogether, the stability of Southeast Asia is threatened. But the implications go much further: for the Soviet Union, Vietnam's main supporter, which shows no inclination to curb Hanoi's present course; for China, whose hostility to Vietnam may have helped swell the refugee tide it now piously condemns; and for the United States, the only country capable of taking the lead in fashioning a solution and whose handling of the situation will determine its standing in the region in the immediate future.

Slow to recognize the human tragedy unfolding in Indochina, the West has yet to formulate an adequate response to it. After an unseemly display of indifference and buck-passing, the international community is at last starting to treat the symptoms: saving refugee lives and finding permanent homes for them. But it has yet to find a lasting cure for the disease. The fact is that Vietnam has discovered a powerful political weapon in the refugees and is unlikely to stop employing it until Hanoi sees some worthwhile diplomatic gains.

A number of nations have reacted to Hanoi's refugee policies and military action against Kampuchea by suspending aid and otherwise ostracizing the Vietnamese. The United States, consistent with this approach, has frozen moves to normalize relations with its former battlefield adversary. But Hanoi is proving almost as impervious to diplomatic pressure as it once was to carpet bombing. At the same time, such pressures could prove counterproductive, particularly for the refugees. Ultimately, the answer to the growing refugee crisis in Southeast Asia may lie in the opposite direction-bringing Vietnam ...

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