SOUTHEAST ASIAN COUNTRIES
REJECT NEW ARRIVALS

by  PHI-VÂN NGUYEN

January 2020

The consultation meeting in December 1978 found the solution to the refugee crisis. Yet Southeast Asian States continued to push back the incoming population. Why did Southeast Asian states reject refugees? Progress was made with the consultation meeting. But the rate of arrivals accelerated with the outbreak of the Third Indochina War. The number of resettlement places could not match the number of incoming refugees. So Southeast Asian states toughened – not loosened– their policy on new arrivals. 

Making Progress

The UNHCR made significant progress in the months following the consultation meeting.1 The High Commissioner pursued bilateral talks with countries. Vietnam had announced it would allow people with family or medical reasons to leave Vietnam.2 So the UNHCR held talks with Hanoi. They eventually concluded an agreement in May 1979. With the Orderly Departure Program, the agency could screen people before they departed Vietnam.3 This removed all the risks involved in reaching another country.

ASEAN countries had also proposed to create special processing centers. Islands, for example, could become screening centers. Countries would not loose sovereignty over them. But they would serve as a buffer zone, where the person arriving would not yet be on their soil claiming asylum. There, UNHCR officers could interview them and arrange resettlement elsewhere.4 Such arrangements had to meet certain conditions, however. There would be no residual cases. The UNHCR had to make sure it would have a resettlement place for each refugee. The organization therefore needed firm and repeated commitments from third countries. This was already challenging enough. This measure would also allow these states to remain uninvolved in the crisis. Malaysia or Thailand, were looking forward to transfering the refugees they had already welcomed to these centers.5 “UNHCR is especially concerned that a SPC [Special Processing Center] should in no way become a substitute for the first asylum extended to the present caseload in the region or to new arrivals.”6 In that case, creating centers would help process refugees. But it would also allow Southeast Asian countries to ignore their duty to protect vulnerable aliens. 

Finally, states responded to Poul Hartling’s call for more resettlement places. Resettlement quotas increased from 57,000 in mid-October 1978 to 90,000 by the end of March 1979.7 This increase was significant. But even then, it was not enough. People continued arriving on boats and were directed to small islands. Pulau Bidong, Galang or Palawan became transit centers. There, refugees faced an uncertain future. 

The December 1978 Consultation Meeting increased the resettlement quotas by almost 60 percent

Resettlement places in mid-October
37000
Resettlement places in March 1979
70000

Pushing Back Refugees

Despite this progress, Southeast Asian states continued to push back refugees. Indonesia and the Philippines took tougher stances.8 The most radical of them all, though, was Malaysia. The reasons why Malaysia refused to grant temporary asylum are complex. The country still does not have legal provisions for the protection of refugees. It also inherited from a colonial past which did not value refugee protection. British Malaya deported thousands of ethnic Chinese during the Malayan Emergency.9 Yet this did not prevent the state from granting asylum to Muslims from Mindanao or Chams of Vietnam.10 

Nor does this account for the Vietnamese whom Malaysia welcomed after 1975. Malay nationalism may explain, in part, the reluctance to protect “boat people” in 1978.11 The massive immigration of Chinese under colonial rule led to a strong commitment to defend Malay interests in post-colonial Malaysia. The Malay feared the “boat people” because they were ethnic Chinese. But the most obvious reason might lie in the numbers. The refugees from the Vietnam War and the Southern Philippines arrived in waves. Their arrival then slowed down and almost stopped. In contrast, there seemed to be no end to the flow of “boat people”. Worse yet, the number of arrivals had increased more than six-fold within ten months. In October 1978, 12,524 arrived by boat across the entire region, compared to 1925 persons in January.12 Besides, Vietnamese authorities had taken bribes to let the population leave the territory. This gave the impression that Vietnam was both solving its overpopulation problem and making money out of it. It was unacceptable for Malaysia. 

On March 15, Datuk Hussein Onn, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, announced that the country was closing its doors.13 This policy caused tragedies, which could have been avoided. Two weeks later, the Coast Guards towed a boat away from Malaysian waters. The boat capsized, causing the death of a 100 persons of its 237 passengers.14 The UNHCR regional representative in Malaysia, Rajakopalam Sampatkumar, complained to the Foreign Minister of Malaysia about that incident.15 He also talked to foreign correspondents. Reuters reported that “one of the survivors had gun wounds sustained when a naval patrol boat opened fire to scare the boat away.”16 The Malaysian government was furious when it learned this unfounded allegation.17 

One of the survivors had gun wounds sustained when a naval patrol boat opened fire to scare the boat away.

Rajagopalam Sampatkumar, 3 April 1979 Tweet

The idea that the Coast Guard were ready to open fire surfaced again, two months later. This time, it was not a rumour, but the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mohamed Bin Mahathir which made two explosive declarations. On June 15, he claimed that a law would be passed to allow the Coast Guard to use force, including firearms, to prevent people from coming to Malaysia. And existing refugees would be expelled from the country. The announcement that Malaysia was “opening fire” and “pushing refugees at sea” was a provocation. This would deter new arrivals.18 Yet it also alarmed the international community. But Malaysia was ready not to let any more refugee come if the pace of resettlement was not accelerating. All the results achieved during the December consultations had not been sufficient. People – and an increasing number of them – risked their lives leaving by boats and faced an uncertain future. 

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References

  1. It prepared a brief for Secretary General summarizing them. UN/Kurt Waldheim Files/ S-0990/ 0005/06 ‘Refugees and Displaced Persons in South East Asia, Brief Prepared for the Secretary-General By UNHCR, 12 April 1979’.
  2. UNHCR/F11/2/39_391_39d ‘Draft Summary Report, Consultative Meeting With Interested Governments on Refugees and Displaced Persons in South East Asia, Geneva 11-12 December 1978’, § 39, 138.
  3. See Kumin, J. (2008), ‘Orderly Departure From Vietnam: Cold War Anomaly Or Humanitarian Innovation?’, Refugee Survey Quarterly, 27 (1): 104–17.
  4. UN/Kurt Waldheim Files/ S-0990/ 0005/06 ‘Refugees and Displaced Persons in South East Asia, Brief Prepared for the Secretary-General By UNHCR, 12 April 1979’, Annex I
  5. Ibid., § 4.
  6. Ibid., § 5.
  7. Ibid., §10.
  8. Ibid., §6. For analysis of Southeast Asian states' position in the secondary literature see Davies, Sarah. Legitimising Rejection: International Refugee Law in Southeast Asia. Leiden: Brill, 2007 for a discussion of their reluctance to become party to the 1951 Convention related to the status of refugees; see Chantavanich, Supang, and E. Bruce Reynolds, eds. Indochinese Refugees: Asylum and Resettlement  Bangkok: Institutie of Asian Studies, 1988 and Sutter, Valerie O’Connor. The Indochinese Refugee Dilemma. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990 for an analysis of the political context of this reluctance.
  9. Authorities were ready to send them anywhere, regardless of the context of the Chinese civil war and were even considering deporting to an island, Low, Choo Chin. “The Repatriation of the Chinese as a Counter-Insurgency Policy During the Malayan Emergency.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 45, no. 3 (2014): 363–92. On the mobilization of the Chinese diaspora denouncing these “atrocities,” see Peterson, Glen. “Sovereignty, International Law, and the Uneven Development of the International Refugee Regime.” Modern Asian Studies 49, no. 2 (2015): 439–68.
  10. See Kaur, Amarjit. “Refugees and Refugee Policy in Malaysia.” UNEAC Asia Papers 12–19 (2007): 77–90.
  11. Lipman, Jana K. In Camps: Vietnamese Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Repatriates. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2020, pp. 56–66. This argument also comes forward, yet as a secondary reason, after explaining the sheer number of arrivals in Stubbs, Richard. “Why Can’t They Stay in Southeast Asia? The Problems of Vietnam’s Neighbours,” In Southeast Asian Exodus: From Tradition to Resettlement, edited by Elliot L. Tepper. Ottawa: Canadian Asian Studies Association, 1980, pp. 115–24.
  12. UNHCR/F11/2/39_391_39d. “Consultation With Interested Governments on Refugees and Displaced Persons in South East Asia, Background Note, 29 November 1978,” § 20.
  13. (1979), ‘Refugees Face Guns At Pier in Malaysia’, The New York Times, 25 March.
  14. UN/Kurt Waldheim Files/ S-0990/ 0005/06 ‘Refugees and Displaced Persons in South East Asia, Brief Prepared for the Secretary-General By Unhcr, 12 April 1979’, §6.
  15. Ibid., §7.
  16. (1979), ‘100 Vietnamese Refugees Drown’, The New York Times, 3 April.
  17. UN/Kurt Waldheim Files/ S-0990/ 0005/06 ‘Refugees and Displaced Persons in South East Asia, Brief Prepared for the Secretary-General By UNHCR, 12 April 1979’, §7.
  18. Kamm, H. (1979), ‘Malaysia is Said to Drop Plan to Fire on Refugees’, The New York Times, 17 June.