Vietnam to Let Refugees Back In: U.N. Official

GENEVA —  In a major change of policy, Vietnam has said it is ready to take boat people wishing to return home and to accelerate the pace of legal departures, a senior U.N. official just back from Hanoi said today.

The Hanoi government no longer brands as traitors and criminals those who have applied to leave the country legally, Sergio Viera de Mello, head of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees for Asia, told Reuters in an interview.

He said senior Vietnamese officials have assured him that, despite the country’s shattered economy, every effort would be made to ease the reintegration of returning boat people into their jobs and villages.

“I have been assured that they will not be arrested on return and put into re-education camps,” Viera de Mello said.

At least 1 million boat people have left Vietnam since the 1975 Communist takeover. There are an estimated 54,000 Vietnamese in refugee camps in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Hong Kong with dim resettlement prospects.

Viera de Mello said easier conditions have been discussed in Hanoi for those wishing to leave the country legally under the so-called Orderly Departure Program set up in 1979 under international supervision.

“The Vietnamese government and the UNHCR agree that in order to reduce the boat-people phenomenon there must be an increase in legal departures,” he added.

Under the program, an estimated 20,000 people left Vietnam legally each year between 1982 and 1985. The figure later dropped due to bottlenecks in both Vietnam and asylum countries.