Refugees Vietnam

Thousands of Vietnamese boat people protested for the fifth consecutive day in Hong Kong camps Friday against plans to deport them to Vietnam, a government spokesman said. More than 8,000 Vietnamese hoisted banners and put up posters in peaceful demonstrations at three camps, including Hong Kong's largest one at Whitehead, he said. The protests followed a riot at the Tai A Chau camp Thursday night that was triggered by the arrest of what police called four drunken troublemakers.

Negotiations on what to do with the Vietnamese boat people scattered around Asia have come to a stalemate, a U.N. official said Friday. "We are exactly at the same point--I must be perfectly frank with you--as in January," said Sergio Vieira de Mello, who has been coordinating the negotiations for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. But High Commissioner Thorvald Stoltenberg has not given up hope and will continue to seek a solution, Vieira de Mello told a news conference.

U.S. military experts will travel to Malaysia soon to find out if a collection of skeletons--said to be remains of American servicemen killed in Vietnam--are indeed those of humans, a Pentagon spokesman said in Washington. The remains and 28 U.S. Army identification tags were found on a boat carrying nine Vietnamese men that landed Monday in a southeastern coastal village in Malaysia.

A total of 151 former re-education camp inmates and relatives from Vietnam arrived in Bangkok, Thailand, en route to new lives in the United States. It was the second day of the first major resettlement of people who were imprisoned because they served the U.S.-backed South Vietnam government that was toppled by Communist forces in April, 1975. A day earlier, 156 arrived on charter flights from Ho Chi Minh City.

A 30-nation conference on Vietnamese "boat people" broke up in disarray Wednesday after U.S. and Vietnamese delegates balked at a compromise starting date for the forced repatriation to Vietnam of those denied refugee status. The United States last week dropped its outright opposition to mandatory repatriation of Vietnamese who are found to be economic migrants. But it told the closed, U.N.

A Hong Kong judge ruled that immigration officials improperly screened a Vietnamese man whose application for asylum was turned down because he was deemed an economic refugee. It was the first successful challenge of Hong Kong's screening policy. To obtain asylum, Vietnamese must prove that they fled their homeland because of persecution and not for economic reasons.

Yen Truong has been juggling three jobs since 1982 with one goal in mind--to bring family members he has not seen for 13 years to Orange County from Vietnam. On Monday to Friday, he works as a deliveryman for the Orange County Public Library from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. In the evening from Monday to Thursday, he clerks for the Anaheim Library Department from 5 to 9 p.m. Truong also moonlights as a cashier for a Garden Grove gas station Friday to Sunday from 4:15 p.m. to midnight.

Guards fired tear gas to break up a clash between about 400 stone-hurling Vietnamese in the fourth incident of violence in a week at Hong Kong's largest camp for boat people. Officials said no one was injured in the latest incident at Whitehead, which houses about 25,000 Vietnamese refugees. Security personnel seized 137 homemade spears and knives in sweeps at the high-security center.

About 500 people held a noisy but peaceful demonstration in Westminster's Little Saigon on Sunday to protest the forced repatriation of Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong. The marchers, mostly Vietnamese-Americans from Orange County, waved placards and banners denouncing a recent agreement between British authorities in Hong Kong and the Communist Vietnamese government. The Oct.