Vietnam Refugees

Vietnamese refugees told rescue workers in the Philippines that some of them killed and ate fellow passengers during a 37-day voyage at sea. A U.N. refugee agency official today quoted some of the 52 survivors as saying three refugees, including an 11-year-old boy, were murdered and eaten, along with two who had starved to death. "Some say everybody took part," Robert Cooper, acting representative of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said. "Some say nobody took part.

After Tony Bui returned to his ancestral Vietnam to make his 1999 prizewinning "Three Seasons," he wrote with his brother Timothy Linh Bui the gentle, bittersweet and deeply personal "Green Dragon," which Timothy adapted for the screen and directed. The brothers, who co-wrote and co-produced "Three Seasons," have stated that the inspiration for their film came from their mother's stories of the hardships she and other Vietnamese refugees endured upon their arrival in America.

The government of Hong Kong, saying its resources for housing Vietnamese "boat people" have been overwhelmed, moved 350 men, women and children Tuesday to an island with only basic rations and no shelter. The Vietnamese, the latest of the 2,300 "boat people" who have arrived in the British colony over the past three days, were taken by police launch and left under guard on Tai A Chau, the main island in the Soko group, about 18 miles southwest of Hong Kong Island. "They will be provided with food and water, but we are not able to provide them with shelter," said government refugee coordinator Mike Hanson.

Federal immigration officials are investigating allegations that an Orange County Vietnamese refugee committed atrocities against fellow prisoners at a Communist "reeducation" camp more than two decades ago, including beating an inmate to death. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service launched the investigation last year after several survivors of the Thanh Cam prison camp near Hanoi identified Thi Dinh Bui of Garden Grove as one of the camp's brutal enforcers.

Despite signs that relations between the United States and Vietnam might be thawing, leaders of the National Congress of Vietnamese in America said Saturday that the United States should not rush into lifting the 15-year-old trade embargo against Vietnam and normalizing relations. "Currently, the Communists in Vietnam need the U.S. more than the U.S. needs the Communists in Vietnam," Bui Diem, former South Vietnam ambassador to the United States, said in an interview.

David Lamb's article (Nov. 23), "Vietnam Correspondents Gather for Reunion," reveals quite a lot about the slants and misperceptions of those who reported on the war. The failures of some reporters to understand what was at stake is illustrated by a quote attributed to former New York Times reporter Gloria Emerson: ". . . And I look back and I wonder, if indeed we had won the war, what is it exactly that we would have won?" Surely it is time for reporter Emerson to look at some of the evidence.

Angrily tossing into a box bags of rice, noodles and other food products made in Thailand, about 100 Vietnamese Americans on Wednesday called for a boycott of Thai goods in protest of alleged brutality against Vietnamese refugees. The event was organized by Project Ngoc, a Vietnamese refugees support group based at UC Irvine. According to the group, about 2,300 Vietnamese refugees, or "boat people," remain in Thai detention camps awaiting repatriation to Vietnam.

A total of 930 Vietnamese refugees arrived by boat in Thailand in March, the highest monthly figure for "boat people" in five years, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reported. The March figure was the highest since April, 1982, when 1,046 Vietnamese landed in Thailand. A spokesman said that at the end of March, there were 7,855 Vietnamese boat people living in camps in Thailand and 31,654 in all the region's camps. Malaysia also reported receiving more refugees.

Recent violence in a Vietnamese refugee camp in Hong Kong, rather than fostering outside sympathy for the detainees' hopes of resettlement abroad, is intensifying the determination of authorities to send most "boat people" back to Vietnam. Robert van Leeuwen, the top U.N.

About 150 protesters demonstrated Tuesday against the forced repatriation of Vietnamese refugees from Hong Kong during a rally outside the British Consulate General. The demonstrators carried signs, chanted and marched in front of the bank that houses the consulate on Wilshire Boulevard for two hours before 10 of them were allowed inside to meet with an embassy official to protest the agreement between the British and Vietnamese governments. Under the Oct.

On a ragged dock in the Mississippi Delta, 50-year-old Rick Cao darns the nets of the Miss My Phuong, using both hands and a big toe to sort through a bird's nest of nylon. Soon, he'll shove off again to mine the Gulf of Mexico for shrimp, and he might go weeks without hearing a word of English on his marine radio. The Vietnamese, he explains, "are taking over the gulf." At an office park outside San Jose, 42-year-old Thinh Nguyen folds himself into his Acura after another 15-hour day.

Angrily tossing into a box bags of rice, noodles and other food products made in Thailand, about 100 Vietnamese Americans on Wednesday called for a boycott of Thai goods in protest of alleged brutality against Vietnamese refugees. The event was organized by Project Ngoc, a Vietnamese refugees support group based at UC Irvine. According to the group, about 2,300 Vietnamese refugees, or "boat people," remain in Thai detention camps awaiting repatriation to Vietnam.

Chau Tue Carey looks around apprehensively at the nearly empty courtyard behind the Orange County Civic Center. It is time for her hastily arranged demonstration against President Clinton's decision to normalize relations with Vietnam. Only one man is present. It's still early, Carey is saying brightly. People don't know how to get there. They have to work. She runs out of excuses and sighs.

After nearly 20 years of poignant drama on the high seas, the saga of Vietnam's "boat people" appeared to be heading for a neat, quiet solution. Departures from Vietnam, which reached tens of thousands a year in the 1980s, had been reduced to a trickle. Hong Kong recorded 20,179 arriving Vietnamese boat people in 1991, but only 94 last year.

After fleeing his homeland in a fishing boat, Giang Tran prospered as a real estate developer, studied to become a lawyer and wrote two books. The 30-year-old Vietnamese-American drove a BMW, lived in a posh condo in Santa Ana and flew from Los Angeles to San Francisco just for lunch. "I wasn't a millionaire, but I lived like a millionaire. Whatever I had, I spent," he said. Eventually, Tran lost interest in that lifestyle because, "I found no value in what I was doing."

When Anne-Thu Pham heard the boy singing a song in perfect Vietnamese, she was impressed. His looks seemed very "American" to her, so she complimented him in English on his command of her native language. But the boy merely stared at her. Irritated, Anne-Thu muttered to herself in Vietnamese, "How rude!" The boy's face brightened. In Vietnamese, he quickly apologized, explaining that he did not speak English.

Police fired tear gas today to quell clashes among Vietnamese refugees at a detention center where two days of fighting have left nearly 70 people injured, officials reported. At least 38 refugees and 30 corrections staff members have been hurt in the feuding, government spokeswoman Fanny Kong said. Some have required hospitalization.

A U.S. Navy ship on routine duty rescued 50 Vietnamese refugees aboard a crippled wooden boat in the South China Sea, a Navy spokesman said Thursday. Lt. Lee Saunders of the 7th Fleet said the guided missile frigate Curts took in the refugees Tuesday, 350 miles off the Philippine coast, after determining their wooden boat was "unseaworthy, overcrowded and unable to navigate." The refugees, 34 men and 16 women, said they had been at sea for 10 days.

The Vietnamese enclaves of Orange County have provided fertile ground for Republican recruiting, but as Vice President Dan Quayle found out in a visit last week, new voters also bring expectations. The recent move toward normalization of U.S. relations with Vietnam has produced fresh anxiety in Little Saigon in Westminster. It's a community all too familiar with the human suffering of economic dislocation and political repression. The news that the U.S.

Recent violence in a Vietnamese refugee camp in Hong Kong, rather than fostering outside sympathy for the detainees' hopes of resettlement abroad, is intensifying the determination of authorities to send most "boat people" back to Vietnam. Robert van Leeuwen, the top U.N.