TWO CRISES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

by  PHI-VÂN NGUYEN

December 2019

The Vietnam War ended with the victory of the People’s Army in 1975. Yet this did not mean the end of disruptions and suffering. Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were in complete turmoil over the next five years. Hundreds of thousands hit the road or embarked in boats to flee their homes. Millions died in prisons, labor camps, or starved. Armed conflicts continued to ravage the region. Why was that? Two crises developed and combined after 1975. Decades of war destruction, authoritarian reforms, and the refusal of neighboring countries to grant asylum, created a refugee crisis. Political tensions also reached a peak. Vietnam engaged in a major confrontation with China and Cambodia, reflecting tensions within the wider Communist world.

Multiple Humanitarian Crises

First, decades of armed fight contributed to this situation. The Japanese occupation accentuated years of deprivation and economic exploitation. Hardships continued when the First Indochina War broke out in 1946 and continued during the Vietnam War. Bombing and the use of defoliants magnified the impact of the armed conflict on the population. Major military showdowns forced people to leave. The 1968 Têt Offensive, the 1972 Easter Offensive, and the 1975 final assault by the People’s Army of Vietnam generated millions of displaced persons within Vietnam.1 The armed fight was not the only reason why there were so many refugees. Belligerent groups encouraged displacement to better control the population.2 Propaganda also incited population movements.3 Governments forcibly moved people for their nation-building programs. The US army’s CORDS attempted to take care of refugees and win their hearts and minds. Think tanks and international organizations took part in these initiatives.4 Political scientists even believed that bombing was beneficial. It isolated Communists from civilians and brought the population close to services and government protection.5
 

The victory of three Communist parties, in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia provoked another refugee crisis. Hundreds of thousands feared retributions because of their attachment to the previous regime. Scholars have studied their resettlement in the United States and elsewhere.6 The population outflow continued after the communist takeovers in former French Indochina. Hanoi refused to organize elections and unified the country by adopting a new constitution. The population in Southern Vietnam went through political reeducation. Sometimes the punishment was prison and labor camps. In 1977 and 1978, the government started socialist reforms. Reforms restricted certain employments to Vietnamese nationals, and eliminated small capitalism. Small businesses closed down. The ethnic Chinese in Vietnam were disproportionately affected by these reforms.7 For these reasons, countless people, including many ethnic Chinese fled Vietnam.8

The communist takeover in Cambodia was no less disruptive. The Khmer Rouge launched a utopian revolution, whose ultimate purpose was to restore the greatness of the Khmer empire. The French colonization and decades of American intervention had disrupted Cambodian society and politics. This revolution tried to eliminate all traces of this foreign “pollution” from a more recent past. As a result, the Khmer Rouges emptied the cities within days. They forced the population to work in the countryside. These peasant-citizens had to meet ambitious production quotas. The famine these reforms provoked caused the death of a quarter of Cambodia’s population of five millions in 1970.9 Hundreds of thousands of others, sought shelter in Thailand or Vietnam.

The two humanitarian crises spilled over into the rest of Southeast Asia. The UNHCR estimated that “land cases” totalled a little less than 250,000. The “land cases” mostly fled the famine and killings in Cambodia. From this, 195,000 had reached Thailand, whereas 150,000 arrived in Vietnam between 1975 and October 1978. In contrast, there were only 40,0000 “boat cases.”10
As the number of incoming refugees kept increasing, Southeast Asian states started to push back refugees. Thailand and Malaysia claimed that they had already welcomed many refugees since 1975. They refused to take any more, unless they would receive one guarantee. That resettlement in third countries cleared the backlog of people in camps, and kept up with the rate of arrivals.11
Their refusal to grant asylum created a third humanitarian crisis. Border authorities and coast guards pushed the refugees back to international waters. People drifted on boats without knowing when or where they could disembark. The fate of the “boat people” captured the attention of the international community and the general public in the Western world. In November 1978, the freight cargo “Hai Hong” transporting 2,500 refugees, symbolized the deadlock. Indonesia refused to let it berth and provided aid on board, before escorting it back to international waters. Malaysia did the same. Eventually, states had to send their immigration officers on the ship to conduct interviews and grant asylum to refugees.
 
Number of "land cases"
220000
Number of "boat cases"
20000

Number of people leaving Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia between 1975 and October 1978 according to the UNHCR.

There was no single reason for the refugee crisis in Southeast Asia. Several humanitarian crises, unfolding over decades, combined to cause this suffering. Since the agony of “boat people” raised awareness over the plight of refugees, the UNHCR convened a Consultation meeting in December 1978. Participant states agreed to increase their resettlement quotas and funding. But these additional contributions failed to meet the needs of the humanitarian crisis.

A Political Crisis

The chaos caused by widespread displacement of the population was not the only source of tension in the area. In addition to the population flow and Communist takeovers, a major political crisis loomed in the horizon. Vietnam waged yet another war, this time, against its neighbours Cambodia and China. 

The fact that two Communist parties took power in April 1975 did not mean that they were friendly with each other. Relations deteriorated between the two communists giants, China and the Soviet Union, in the late 1960s.12 China drifted away from the Soviet Union. So did Cambodia from its neighbor, Vietnam. Worried that the Vietnamese were aligning with the Soviets, the Chinese and Vietnamese grew apart. Vietnam was on its own. The United States refused to normalize their relationships, while China backed up the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.13 Vietnam’s ongoing economic crisis and increasing diplomatic isolation led Hanoi to decide that it would have, sooner or later, to invade Cambodia.14 As a result, Hanoi concluded a Treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union on November 3, 1978. The Article Six of the agreement, stipulated mutual consultations for a military intervention in case any of the two countries were attacked or threatened to be attacked. China immediately saw a Soviet attempt to encircle it and normalized relations with the United States, which had improved since Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. So any skirmish between Vietnam, Cambodia and China, would have large implications. In the event of trouble, alliance commitments could lead to the possibility of a wider war at the international level. Things turned violent when the Khmer Rouge attacked Vietnam in the late 1970s as the Chinese supported Pol Pot convinced that Vietnam had become a Soviet satellite. 

Vietnam’s economic crisis and increasing diplomatic isolation led Hanoi to decide that it would have to invade Cambodia.15 Now that the 

 

 invaded Cambodia in response to Khmer Rouge’s incursions into its territory. Two weeks after entering Cambodia, Hanoi installed a new government. Officials claimed it was a necessary measure to end the Khmer Rouge genocide and provide relief to the population. But China read that intervention differently. Deng Xiaoping consulted Jimmy Carter about this issue. Once assured that Washington would not perceive any Chinese intervention as a hostile gesture, Chinese troops invaded the northern highlands of Vietnam in February 1979. Two weeks later, Beijing announced the withdrawal from Vietnam. Although Beijing claimed that the road to Hanoi was wide open, the military intervention did not help China achieve its goals. Hanoi did not revise its alliance to the Soviet Union, neither did it withdraw its troops from Cambodia. The humanitarian and political crises started as two separate developments. But the involvement of the United Nations in both issues increasingly brought them together. 

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References

  1. Que, Le Thi, Terry A. Rambo, and Gary D. Murfin. “Why They Fled: Refugee Movement During the Spring 1975 Communist Offensive in South Vietnam.” Asian Survey 16, no. 9 (1976): 855–63.
  2. Rambo, Terry A., J.M. Tinker, and J.D. LeNoir. The Refugee Situation in Phu Yen Province. McLean: Human Science Research Incorporated, 1967.
  3. The most famous example was when Saigon and the United States Navy launched "Operation Passage to Freedom" in 1954 to encourage people to join Southern Vietnam after the partition of the country. See the bibliography for references on that event.
  4. Rand Corporation. RAND Vietnam Interview Series TET-B: Refugees Reactions to Tet Offensive. 1972, Rand Corporation. RAND Vietnam Interview Series AGR: Attitudes of refugees towards various aspects of the war. 1972.
  5. The most famous example of it would be Huntington, Samuel P. “The Bases of Accommodation.” Foreign Affairs 46 (1968): 642–56.
  6. See Espiritu, Yen Le. Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Militarized Refugees. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014 for a recent study adopting a critical approach to the arrival of Vietnamese to the United States. Another recent study is Nguyen, Nathalie Huynh Chau. Memory is Another Country. Greenwood, 2009, and Nguyen, Nathalie Huynh Chau. New Perceptions of the Vietnam War. McFarland, 2015. A recent project is gathering interviews of Southeast Asian refugees and policy makers in Canada, www.https://heartsoffreedom.org/ For a more classic, yet comparative analysis of resettlement, see Hein, J. (1993), States and International Migrants, the Incorporation of Indochinese Refugees in the United States and France, Boulder: Westview Press. For the United States only, see Hein, J. (1995), From Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia: A Refugee Experience in the United States, New York: Twayne Press. For France only, see Meslin, Karine. Les Réfugiés du Mékong, Cambodgiens, Laotiens et Vietnamiens en France. Détours: Bourdeaux, 2020.
  7. Woodside, Alexander. “Nationalism and Poverty in the Breakdown of Sino-Vietnamese Relations.” Pacific Affairs 52, no. 3 (1979): 381–409 provides a good discussion of the impact of these reforms on the ethnic Chinese. For a detailed chronology of these reforms, see Quinn-Judge, Sophie. “Chronology of the Hoa Refugee Crisis in Vietnam,” In The Third Indochina War, Conflict Between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972–1979, edited by Odd Arne Westad, and Sophie Quinn-Judge, London: Routlege, 2006, 234–37. An explanation of the legal aspects can be found in Chiu, H. (1980). Current Developments: China’s Legal Position on Protecting Chinese Residents in Vietnam. American Journal of International Law, 74(3), 685-693. Still on Chinese refugees, see Benoît, C. (1981), ‘Vietnam’s “Boat People”’, in D. W. P. Elliott (ed), The Third Indochina Conflict, Boulder: Westview Press, 139–62, Willmott, W. E. (1980), ‘The Chinese in Indochina’, in E. L. Tepper (ed), Southeast Asian Exodus: From Tradition to Resettlement, Ottawa: Canadian Asian Studies Association, 69–80.On Communist reforms see Path, K. (2020), Vietnam’s Strategic Thinking During the Third Indochina War, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Ngô Vinh Long. “The Socialization of South Vietnam,” In The Third Indochina War, Conflict Between China, Vietnam, and Cambodia, 1972–1979, in the same volume, pp. 33–64 or Duiker, William J. Vietnam Since the Fall of Saigon. Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1980.
  8. China claimed that Vietnam was exporting 72,000, then 100,000, and even 130,000 Chinese away from Vietnam, Robinson, Courtland. Terms of Refuge, the Indochinese Exodus and International Response. New York: Zed Books, 1998, p. 30. But the UNHCR never provided official figures on the number of ethnic Chinese among refugees, although it was clear that they was an overwhelming majority of them in the "boat cases."
  9. The most important references on the Khmer Rouges are Kiernan, Ben. The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–1979. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996, Kiernan, Ben. How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930–1975. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985, Chandler, David. The Tragedy of Cambodian History, Politics, War, and Revolution since 1945. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991, and Chandler, David. Brother Number One, A Political Biography of Pol Pot. Boulder: Westview Press, 1999.
  10. UNHCR 11/2/39/391 Volume 4, "Note by the High Commissioner, 29 November 1978," paragraph 13.
  11. On Southeast Asian states' compliance to international refugee protection standards, see Davies, Sarah. “Saving Refugees or Saving Borders? Southeast Asian States and the Indochinese Refugee Crisis.” Global Change, Peace & Security 18, no. 1 (2006): 3–24.
  12. On the Sino Soviet Split and its consequences on the Vietnam War, see Lüthi, Lorenz. The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008; Radchenko, Sergey. Two Suns in The Heavens, The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962–1967. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2009; Gaiduk, Ilya. The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996; Szalontai, Balazs. “Solidarity within limits: Interkit and the evolution of the Soviet Bloc’s Indochina policy, 1967–1985.” Cold War History 17, no. 4 (2017): 385–403; Ang Chen Guan. The Vietnam War from the Other Side: The Vietnamese Communists’ Perspective. London: Routlege, 2002;  Ang Chen Guan. Vietnamese Communists’ Relations with China and the Second Indochina Conflict, 1956-1962. Jefferson: McFarland, 1997; Chen Jian. “China’s Involvement in the Vietnam War, 1964-69.” The China Quarterly 142 (1995): 356–87.
  13. I rely on the most important edited volume on the Third Indochina War for the following information, Westad, Odd Arne, and Sophie Quinn-Judge, eds. Third Indochina War: Conflict Between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972-1979. London: Frank Cass, 2006. See also the pioneering study, Elliott, David W. P., ed. The Third Indochina Conflict. Boulder: Westview Press, 1981 and the groundbreaking analysis Chanda, Nayan. Brother Enemy: The War After the War. New York: Harcourt Publishing, 1986.
  14. Path, K. (2020), Vietnam’s Strategic Thinking During the Third Indochina War, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
  15. Path, K. (2020), Vietnam’s Strategic Thinking During the Third Indochina War, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.