bout de papier, Vol. 28, No. 1 (2014) — Spring 2014 // Printemps 2014, pp. 24–27
by Dara Marcus
Note de la redaction : Il y a près de 40 ans, le Canada a relevé le défi d’un phénomène qui semblait nouveau — les « réfugiés de la mer » du Vietnam. Nous avons contribué a établir une nouvelle norme pour la reaction de la communauté internationale a ce qui est devenu une marée montante de réfugiés fuyant la violence ethnique et confessionnelle, l’oppression politique, les guerres civiles et les conflits internationaux. C’est aussi une marée de défavorisés sur le plan économique qui refusent d’accepter platement le désespoir de leurs vies.
Dara Marcus, étudiante diplômée, met l’accent sur le dossier du Canada en matière d’immigration. Dans « Saving Lives », elle reprend le récit là où Michael Molloy s’était interrompu dans un numero antérieur (portant sur le sauvetage d’un grand nombre de ressortissants asiatiques en Ouganda). C’est une histoire de leadership et de conviction morale canadiens concrétisés en action humanitaire — grâce a des agents d’immigration aussi aguerris que courageux. Ainsi, les réfugiés a bord du Haï Hong ont tous été sauvés et réétablis — non seulement au Canada, mais aussi aux E.-U., en Allemagne et meme en Suisse. Le contraste ne pourrait être plus grand quand on songe du sort des réfugiés juifs de quelques décennies plus tot qui étaient a bord du Struma (coulé, sans moteur, après avoir été remorqué d’Istanbul jusqu’en Mer Noire), ou du St. Louis qui s’est vu refuser le droit d’accoster au Canada et qui a dû retourner a son port de depart où une mort certaine attendait les réfugiés.
La communauté internationale est appelée a relever des défis nouveaux et déchirants. Bon nombre d’entre nous connaissent bien les cas des Tamils au Sri Lanka, des migrants invariablement noyés dans la Méditerranée et des personnes déplacées par suite du conflit interminable en Syrie, qui vont s’entasser en grand nombre chez leurs malheureux voisins. Les Canadiens peuvent tirer fierté du Haï Hong, mais cette histoire inspirante soulève aussi de véritables questions sur notre reaction a des crises semblables de nos jours. Hier comme aujourd’hui, leadership et conviction,
The Tang family being transferred from the Hai K«
On November 9, 1978, the Hai Hong, an overcrowded boat carrying roughly 2,500 refugees from Vietnam, sat stranded off the coast of Port Klang, Malaysia. Refused permission to land, and with a disabled engine, the boat was caught in a standoff with Malaysian officials while those on board suffered from lack of food, water, medical supplies, and adequate shelter. “Boat people” had been fleeing Vietnam since the fall of Saigon in 1975, but the Hai Hong incident, which garnered attention around the world, would transform Canada’s response to the Indochinese refugee movement.
On April 30, 1975, Saigon had been captured by the National Liberation Front and the North Vietnamese Army, signalling the defeat of South Vietnam. As the Communist regime came into power, many | ; South Vietnamese, especially ethnic | | Chinese, who were in a position similar to | : that of the Ugandan Asians in 1972, were | I jailed, forced into hard labour in re-education | ; camps, or moved into New Economic | ( Zones. Professors, previous government | I employees, artists, businessmen, and draft-age youths felt pressure to flee Vietnam. Around 130,000 left in 1975, resettling mainly in the US. At that time, Canada agreed to accept anyone with relatives in Canada, plus an additional 3,000. After the initial exodus, a steady flow of around
2,000—5,000 people escaped Vietnam each month; however, starting in the second half of 1978, thousands were fleeing each month, peaking at 21,505 in November 1978. While many escaped in secret, others bribed officials thousands of US dollars to allow them to leave.
Canada had been gradually increasing the quota of boat people it was accepting up to this time. In a Cabinet document from June 26, 1975, Minister Bob Andras stated that he “would not be seeking authority to admit Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees beyond the 3,000 already authorized by Cabinet.” The infamous case of General Quang, who had fled, via the US, to Canada as a refugee (but was dogged by accusations of corruption and drug trafficking) had soured the public’s support for Indochinese refugees. However, as the numbers of people fleeing Vietnam rose, Canada slowly increased its quotas. In October 1976, the annual quota was 180 boat people, which was raised to 50 families per month in January 1978, and then to 70 families per month in June.
At this time, Canada was implementing its new Immigration Act of 1976, which came into effect in 1978. The new Act, with a focus on who should be allowed into Canada rather than who should be kept out, included refugees as a new immigrant class, exempt from the point system used to determine the admissibility of other potential immigrants. Additionally, the new private sponsorship programme was launched, under which groups composed of at least five Canadian citizens could sponsor refugees. This Act also allowed for provinces to make individual immigration agreements with the federal government. Québec took advantage of this legislation to obtain the right to select and recruit its own immigrants, based on the need to promote French language and culture. On February 20, 1978, Minister of Employment and Immigration Bud Cullen and his Québec counterpart, Jacques Couture, signed the Cullen-Couture agreement, granting Québec a measure of control over immigrant selection.
In August 1978, a syndicate-run ship filled with Vietnamese refugees who had been willing to pay dearly to escape, dropped its passengers on an uninhabited Indonesian island, leaving them for the UNHCR to take care of. Following this successful financial venture, the same group decided to purchase another boat and fill it with more paying Vietnamese refugees. The Hai Hong was a cargo ship built in 1948, and purchased for scrap metal in 1978. Instead of going to Hong Kong for demolition, the rusting boat docked in Vietnam, where it had arranged to pick up 1,200 refugee passengers. However, the government forced the captain to take an additional 1,300 people. Those fleeing included a few young ethnic Vietnamese escaping military conscription, but the vast majority were ethnic Chinese. Each refugee paid roughly $3,200 US, or 16 bars of gold: ten to Vietnamese officials, and six to the syndicate. The Hai Hong departed Vietnam on October 24, 1978, with 2,500 passengers on board.
Québec Minister Jacques Couture on the right, wi
From the Mekong Delta, the boat headed toward Indonesia, but was blown off course and damaged by Typhoon Rita. With engine trouble, and virtually no food or water, the Hai Hong spent several fruitless days attempting to land, and finally dropped anchor near Port Klang in Malaysian waters. However, because the passengers had paid the Vietnamese government to let them leave, Malaysia, like Indonesia, refused to accept them as refugees. Malaysia voiced an understandable concern that accepting these boat people as legitimate refugees would simply encourage the trafficking of further refugees from Vietnam.
The Hai Hong stayed anchored offshore, receiving vital food and medical supplies from the UNHCR and the Red Crescent. Malaysia was trying to avoid increasing the number of refugees in its already-overflowing camps; the price of acceptance to a Malay camp was another resident’s departure, whether via acceptance by another country, or voluntary repatriation. Many countries, including Canada, expressed sympathy for the plight of the Hai Hong passengers, and argued with Malaysia and each other over what was to be done, but initially avoided making any concrete commitments. Malaysia finally announced its intention to tow the disabled boat out to open waters and leave those on board to their fate. Immigration Minister Bud Cullen felt that “Malaysia was calling our bluff, and heaven knows they had every right to, having accepted something in excess of 35,000 refugees.”
The Government of Canada faced a dilemma: although it did not want to abandon the 2,500 refugees on board the Hai Hong, accepting them would mean bypassing tens of thousands of refugees already waiting in camps. Ottawa was working on convincing Kuala Lumpur to delay towing the Hai Hong out to open waters. Meanwhile, although Cullen had publicly stated that Canada would support whatever position the UN took, he felt that the UNHCR was taking too long to decide how to handle the situation. He was determined to take quick action on the Hai Hong. He was convinced Canada should take a leadership role, a “commitment of such magnitude that other countries would be encouraged to follow,” despite concern that Canada might end up “caught with the whole thing.” On November 16, just as Malaysia was on the verge of carrying out its threat, Couture informed Cullen that, under the Cullen-Couture agreement, Québec would accept at least 200 Hai Hong refugees, or 30% of the total Canada accepted, should that number exceed 200.
Until journalists boarded the boat and reported on the squalid conditions, there was little Canadian media and public interest in the Hai Hong. But Francophone newspapers in Québec began to run in-depth descriptions of the situation on the boat, where “on marche littéralement sur les gens, hommes, femmes, enfants et vieillards, étendus ou accroupis, visible-ment épuisés et angoissés, mais demeurant, sans exception, d’une grande dignité.” Public interest skyrocketed. Following on the heels of Québec’s offer, Canada announced it would commit to resettling 600 passengers. As the story of Canada’s commitment spread, the government’s hope that its action would encourage other countries to react was realized. The Associated Press soon reported that France, the United States, and West Germany had joined Canada in committing to resettle the Hai Hong refugees.
Immigration’s Ian Hamilton, Dick Martin, and trainee Scott Mullin were immediately sent to Kuala Lumpur to take charge of selecting the refugees Canada would accept from the Hai Hong. They were alerted that Cullen was determined to take quick action on the Hai Hong, and, in fact, the first flight to Canada was on November 25, just 16 days after the Hai Hong was first stranded off Port Klang.
Before the first flight of refugees could be organized, however, Hamilton, Martin, and Mullin needed to access the people on board the Hai Hong. Despite Canada’s public declaration that it would take 600 refugees, Malaysia would not facilitate the selection process. Hamilton believed that their threat to tow the boat out to sea was not idle, and Malaysia maintained that the Hai Hong passengers were not legitimate refugees. The Canadians therefore were not allowed to board the boat, and the refugees could not land on Malaysian shores. When the officers tried to survey the boat from a mile away, the police confiscated their binoculars. A compromise was soon reached: the Malaysian police would anchor a minesweeper between the Hai Hong and shore, where they would bring small boatloads of refugees to the waiting Canadian officials for interviewing and processing. The security police made clear their stance on the situation, carrying automatic weapons and cans of mace to demonstrate that the refugees were unwelcome and considered dangerous. The Canadian officials, not easily deterred, quickly accepted this setup and turned to winning over the police officers, maintaining an upbeat and friendly attitude, and showering them with Canadian souvenirs.
Despite oppressive heat and pouring rain, police interruptions, and unexplained delays by Malaysian officials, the immigration team was prepared to dive into the selection process by November 21. Starting before sunrise and working until sundown, the team selected 74 people the first day (after a six-hour delay), and 356 the second day, finishing with a total of 604 by the end of the third day. Those selected included, at 82 years, the oldest passenger on board, as well as the two youngest, both of whom were born on the Hai Hong. Surprisingly, there were no serious medical health issues among the refugees; however, two elderly women had died earlier in the voyage, and another woman died from a fall after Canada started processing applications. While many people had rashes due to having lived for a month under terrible conditions without bathing facilities, the worst injury was a broken leg.
On November 24 at 3am, having finished the processing, Hamilton realized that, in their exhausted, overworked state, they had accidentally processed one family of 15 members twice, leaving them 15 refugees short. He convinced the now fairly friendly police to bring him back to the Hai Hong, where he knelt in the dark beside the ship and processed 15 more refugees.
Even after the refugees had been selected, Malaysia would not relax its guard. Officials refused to allow the refugees access to showers before boarding their plane to Canada. Instead, they provided an armed escort from the pier to the airport buses. As commercial airlines declined to get involved, Canadian military planes were used to transport the refugees. When the military aircraft landed in Malaysia, the police moved in, searched the planes for weapons, and then maintained tight security around them.
Back in Canada, preparations were made to receive the refugees at Longue- Pointe military base near Montréal. The plan was that the refugees would stay for I no longer than 48 hours — enough time to process them, conduct a complete medical examination, and allow them to bathe, eat, rest, and pick out a new winter wardrobe —many were barefoot, none were prepared for winter — before heading to their permanent destinations. The refugees arrived in four groups: November 25 and 28, and December I and 5. The media was on hand to document the tired, but smiling people holding toddlers waving Canadian flags as they arrived in their new homeland.
The successful handling of the Hai Hong mission, including its resonance in the media and with the Canadian public, led to Canada resettling far more Indochinese refugees than anyone could have predicted. At the end of 1978, Canada committed to accepting 5,000 Indochinese refugees as part of the first annual refugee plan, and instituted an Indochinese designated class, which would permit acceptance of refugees based on admissibility rather than eligibility; this signalled the Government’s understanding that conventional refugee classification was not applicable to this movement. As the Hai Hong incident had shown, if refugees were not removed from the overcrowded camps quickly, those waiting on boats for permission to enter the camps could die.
The Hai Hong mission’s impact on the public became apparent in July 1979, when the government proposed a programme in which it would match up to 21,000 private sponsorships. A wide variety of community organizations, from religious groups to bowling clubs, clamoured to sponsor refugees, and the limit was reached within four months. In March 1980, as offers of private sponsorship continued to flow in, a final increase brought the total quota to 60,000. In the end, Canada accepted over 200,000 Indochinese refugees, the highest number per capita of any resettlement country.
Dara Marcus holds an MA from the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs where she worked with bout contributor Michael Molloy (see Vol. 26, No. 4, “How Ugandan Asians Came to Call Canada Home”). Dara is involved with the Canadian Immigration Historical Society (CIHS) and is a recipient of the Gunn Prize for her original research and writing on the Hai Hong. (The “Gunn” is awarded by the CIHS and the Immigration and Migration Research Centre at Wilfrid Laurier University for the best historical immigration term paper in Canada.)
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 28, No. 1 (2014) — Spring 2014 // Printemps 2014, pp. 24–27. Read the rest of this issue →
