TEN YEARS OF REFUGEE PROTECTION

by  PHI-VÂN NGUYEN

December 2019

The July 1979 Conference found a solution to the humanitarian crisis. It coordinated transit through camps in Southeast Asia and established resettlement in third countries. This provided near automatic protection of Southeast Asian refugees for nearly ten years. Why did this compromise last for so long? The main reason for the longevity of this solution lied in Cold War tensions. The protection of refugees continued as long as Vietnamese troops remained in Cambodia.

A System of Temporary and Permanent Asylum

Agreement was reached on several important matters. Resettlement countries raised their quotas and increased their funding to the UNHCR. Governments also requested their immigration officers to lower their critera. They should apply flexibility when selecting candidates.1 Southeast Asian countries, in turn, accepted to let refugees enter Special Processing Centers. They were being promised that they would not be left with residual cases. International charities worked together with UN agencies to provide emergency relief. All in all, this created a system of near automatic protection. Anyone reaching these centers became de facto refugees.2 Hanoi was responsible for reducing the number of departures.3 There had not been such coordinated and a large scale system of refugee protection since World War Two.4 Yet this compromise also provided an interpretation of the crisis. It implied that Vietnam was such a threat to the region, that anyone leaving the peninsula was a victim of persecution, therefore worthy of help.

War in Cambodia

A coordinated response to the refugee crisis did not mean that it solved all problems in the region. Fighting between the Vietnamese People’s Army and the Khmer Rouge moved closer to the Thai border. The Khmer Rouge established their maquis in the area. They used the humanitarian aid provided to refugee camps for their own survival. The Thai and Chinese government supported them by arranging the aid to go through Thai territory.5 International agencies often had no choice but to rely on the Thai Army to distribute relief. Some of it inevitably went to the Khmer Rouge hidden in the Thai maquis.6 The refugee population ended up being trapped between two threats: Khmer Rouge soldiers intimidated them and Vietnamese forces raided their camps.7 Many became refugee-warrior communities.8 Courtland Robinson underscored the irony: “the humanitarian program on the border served both to provoke conflict and to relieve its victims.”9

Maintaining the Pressure

UNHCR project officers continued to screen the population and coordinate refugees departure. In the mid 1980s, there were increasing doubts over the system. People arriving in camps did not all seem to be victims of persecution.10 Pierre Jambor, the head of the UNHCR office in Bangkok, voiced his concerns. Was the UNHCR presence encouraging more departures? In private, UNHCR officers wondered whether they had become travel agents. Others, did not understand why people leaving Indochina would get a free pass, whereas Africans and Latin Americans would have to prove that they had a well-founded fear of persecution.11 Yet this system continued until the end of the Cold War made it completely irrelevant.

For over a decade, states continued to use refugee protection for their political interests. The United States, for example, took a more radical position after Ronald Reagan’s election in 1981. Under his administration, Washington was even less inclined to normalize relationships with Hanoi.12 The United States defended the Khmer Rouge’s seat at the United Nations. Washington also funded the Khmer Rouge and supported Thailand’s policy of giving them free passage along the Thai border.13 This policy continued even when Washington faced opposition within the Congress.
In 1981, four members of the House of Representatives visited refugee camps in Southeast Asia. Their report raised concerns over Washington’s policy of protecting Indochinese refugees. The panel conducted interviews in the camps. They realized that push factors were not the only reasons explaining why people left their home country. Pull factors, such as improving their living conditions, also came into play.14 This observation led to a daunting conclusion. All “those who fled were generically referred to as “refugees.”” Yet “some number of them, difficult to ascertain with accuracy, may not qualify as “refugees” within the meaning of the term, defined in the 1967 U.N. Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.”15 According to the report, it was reasonable to believe that Vietnamese and Hmongs feared persecution. But the same could not be said for Lao lowlanders and people fleeing the severe economic conditions in Cambodia. The two things were not the same.16
Despite this warning, the Reagan administration did not revise its commitment. Instead, it made the protection of Southeast Asian refugees more systematic. 
In 1980, Thai authorities threatened to deport refugees to the border. Washington reverted the 1980 Refugee Act to move closer the policy prevailing before 1980. Refugees were people fleeing Communist countries or the Middle East. There were political reasons for this. According to Secretary of State Alexander Haig, “the issue revolves around the nature of regimes in Indochina… These regimes are by policy and practice, totalitarian and revolutionary.”17 This was the reason why the United States could not remain idle. They were victims of persecution and not migrants pulled by economic incentives.

The continuous protection of refugees for foreign policy reasons increasingly cast doubts on the relevance of both legal standards and immigration policies. In 1984 again, the Vietnamese incursion into Thai territory to attack refugee camps suspected of abetting the Khmer Rouge met a firm response from the U.S. government.18 Washington increased its resettlement quota by 1000 per month in order to appease Bangkok’s threats to eliminate refugee camps.19

The following year, the determination to increase resettlement quota raised eyebrows. After a visit to refugee camps in Southeast Asia, Jerry M. Tinker reported to the U.S. Senate Committee that “what started predominantly as a refugee flow has slowly but clearly shifted to a migratory movement, composed of some refugees, a growing number of family reunification cases, and a large number of economic migrants.”20 Despite these concerns, Washington maintained its policy to protect refugees from Southeast Asia. At that point, the disconnect was such that some commented: “the reality seem[ed] to be that the program will continue indefinitely”21 Protecting refugees had deviated from its purpose. Being a refugee had begun to loose its meaning. The fact that people left for economic reasons had little to do with it. Washington’s determination to maintain refugee protection for political reasons contributed to this distortion.

Towards the second half of the 1980s, and especially with Vietnam’s announcement of economic reforms in 1986, a growing number of voices started to question the relevance of this system. Thailand who had hosted the greatest number of refugees, had hosted processing centers for refugees to be resettled overseas and tried local resettlement.22 By May 1987 an international workshop held in Bangkok gathered several embassies, international organization officers and scholars to imagine a solution beyond asylum and resettlement, such as repatriation.23 In Hong Kong, growing dissent expressed in the Legislative Council led the government to declare unilaterally that any person arriving after June 16 1988 would be subject to screening to receive refugee status.24 But it is only when Vietnam attempted to break its diplomatic isolation and announced its withdrawal from Cambodia that this policy changed.25 The United Nations stepped in again in March 1989, months after Hanoi’s announcement. The Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar reunited all states, institutions and NGOs, ten years after Kurt Waldheim’s diplomatic exploit a decade earlier. Only this time, it was to end the system of refugee protection. The Comprehensive Plan of Action, set a cut off date to each of the refugee camps.26 Any person arriving before would be considered a refugee. Anyone arriving afterwards, however, would have to prove that they had a well-founded fear of persecution. The UNHCR created guidelines to help determine the status with the same criteria. But in practice, refugee protection became almost non-existent. Screening officers admitted as few refugees as possible to deter new arrivals.27 All the remaining population was repatriated, sometimes forcibly to Vietnam. Eventually, the UNHCR ended its program when the last processing center closed in the Philippines. Only one camp, run by the Hong Kong authorities, remained operational until 2000. At that point, the Indochinese refugee crisis and its international system of refugee protection had ended.

WHAT’S NEXT

Continue to the next article

Jump to a list of links and references for further reading

Read related archival documents

References

  1. See for example the process in Canada Molloy, Michael J., Pere Duchinsky, Kurt F. Jensen, and Robert Shalka. Running on Empty, Canada and the Indochinese Refugees, 1975–1980. Montreal: McGill University Press, 2017. The UNHCR also praised Nordic countries, who did not hesitate to take the most problematic cases, such as disabled persons.
  2. I borrow this expression from Loescher, Gil. The UNHCR and World Politics, A Perilous Path. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, 203–210.
  3. On the early contacts between Vietnam and Western governments for the creation of immigration screening procedures and family reunification, see Kumin, J. (2008). Orderly Departure from Vietnam: Cold War Anomaly or Humanitarian Innovation? Refugee Survey Quarterly, 27(1), p.111.
  4. For more details on this, see UNHCR. The State of the World’s Refugees 2000: Fifty Years of Humanitarian Action. Geneva: UNHCR, 2000, chp. 4;; Robinson, Courtland. Terms of Refuge, The Indochinese Exodus and International Response. New York: Zed Books, 1998; Wiesner, Louis A. Victims and Survivors: Displaced Persons and Other War Victims in Viet-Nam, 1954-1975. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988.
  5. See Terry, Fiona. Condemned to Repeat? The Paradox of Humanitarian Action. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002, chp. 4, especially 118–119.
  6. See Terry, Fiona, 123. Robinson, Courtland. “Refugee Warriors at the Thai-Cambodia Border.” Refugee Survey Quarterly 19, no. 1 (2000): 28, Shawcross, William. The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust, and Modern Conscience. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984, 80–94, 340–361, especially 308–309.
  7. See Terry, Fiona, 126.
  8. See Robinson, Courtland, 2000, 23–37 and Zolberg, Aristide, Astri Suhrke, and Sergio Aguayo. Escape from Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, chp. 6.
  9. Robinson, Courtland, 2000, 26.
  10. The first doubts came up when Astri Suhrke produced a report for the US Congress in 1980 explaining that newcomers seemed to be "low risk" and that pull factors, such as the desire to improve living conditions by reaching another country might explain why the population flow would continue, Suhrke, Astri. Indochinese Refugees: The Impact of First Asylum Countries and Implications for American Policy, A Study Prepared for the Use of the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States. Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1980. These doubts continued to grow, especially with the observation that some persons qualified as refugees yet did not meet the selection criteria of resettlement countries, while others did meet those criteria, while not qualifying as refugees, Casella, Alexander. “The Refugees from Vietnam: Rethinking The Issue.” The World Today 45, no. 8,9 (1989): 160–164. See also Casella, Alexander. “Managing the “Boat People” Crisis: The Comprehensive Plan of Action for Indochinese Refugees.” International Peace Institute, New York DMS, no. 2 (2016).
  11. Jambor, Pierre. “Voluntary Repatriation of the Indochinese Refugees.” Refuge 9, no. 3 (1990): 7–9.
  12. On Reagan's determination to "bleed" Vietnam over Cambodia, see Martini, Edwin A. Invisible Enemies, The American War on Vietnam 1975–2000. Amherst: University of Massachussetts Press, 2007. However, while Martini underscores the importance of the embargo and the issue of POW/MIA, he does not address the question of refugee protection. The most important analysis of Vietnam’s foreign relations since the end of the war could be found in the special issue of the Journal of American-East Asian Relations in 1995, as well as in Laderman, Scott, and Edwin Martini, eds. Four Decades on: Vietnam, the United States, and the Legacies of the Second Indochina War. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013. For an analysis of the failed attempts to normalize diplomatic relations under Jimmy Carter, see Menétrey-Monchau, Cécile. “The Changing Post-War US Strategy in Indochina,” In The Third Indochina War, Conflict Between China, Vietnam, and Cambodia, 1972–1979, edited by Odd Arne Westad, and Sophie Quinn-Judge, 65–86. London: Routledge, 2006; Jespersen, Christopher T. “The Politics and Culture of Nonrecognition: The Carter Administration and Vietnam.” The Journal of American-East Relations, 4, no. 4 (1995): 397–412.
  13. Haas, Michael. Genocide By Proxy: Cambodian Pawn on a Superpower Chessboard. New York: Praeger, 1990; Haas, Michael. Cambodia, Pol Pot, and the United States: The Faustian Pact. New York: Praeger, 1991; Kiernan, Ben, ed. Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge, the United Nations and the International Community. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. On the US policy towards ending the war in Cambodia, see Solomon, Richard H. Exiting Indochina: U.S. Leadership of the Cambodia Settlement & Normalization of Relations with Vietnam. Washington D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2000.
  14. Marsall Green, Greene, J. F., Hauser, R. E., & Wheeler, R. W. (1982). The Indochinese Refugee Situation, Report to the Secretary of State by the Special Refugee Advisory Panel, August 12, 1981, Appendix to Refugee Problems in Southeast Asia: 1981, A Staff Report Prepared for the Use of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Refugee Policy. Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, p. 46.
  15. Ibid., p. 52.
  16. Ibid., p. 53.
  17. Gwertzman, B. (1981). Policy that Limits Indochina Refugees Is Reversed by U.S. The New York Times. 31 May.
  18. (1984). Vietnam Attacks Condemned by U.S. The New York Times. 18 April. See also Sophie Sickert’s article in this website
  19. (1984). U.S. Agrees to Accept More Vietnam Refugees. The New York Times. 27 June.
  20. United States Ninety-Ninth Congress. (1985). U.S. Refugee Program in Southeast Asia: 1985, Appendix: Refugee and Migration Problems in Southeast Asia: 1984, p. 26.
  21. Gwertzman, B. (1985). The Debt to the Indochinese Is Becoming a Fiscal Drain. The New York Times. 3 mars.
  22. Thomson, Suteera. “Refugees inThailand: Relief, Development, and Integration,” In Southeast Asian Exodus: From Tradition to Resettlement, edited by Elliot L. Tepper, 69–80. Ottawa: Canadian Asian Studies Association, 1980.
  23. Chantavanich, Supang, and E. Bruce Reynolds, eds. Indochinese Refugees: Asylum and Resettlement  Bangkok: Institutie of Asian Studies, 1988.
  24. Lipman, Jana K. In Camps: Vietnamese Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Repatriates. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2020, chp. 5.
  25. Radchenko, Sergey. Unwanted Visionaries: The Soviet Failure in Asia at the End of the Cold War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 139 and following.
  26. Robinson, Courtland. “The Comprehensive Plan of Action for Indochinese Refugees, 1989–1997: Sharing the Burden and Passing the Buck.” Journal of Refugee Studies 17, no. 3 (2004): 319–33.
  27. See the articles and documents included in the special issue of International Refugee Law 5(4), 1993.