Editorials

Tuesday, May 14, 1996

Riot of 'boat people'
underscores dilemma

MORE than 20 years have passed since the Communist conquest of South Vietnam, but the desperate exodus of "boat people" that ensued is still playing out its final chapters. About 30,000 refugees from Vietnam languish in camps in Asian countries, the largest number - 18,000 - in Hong Kong. Although thousands have been admitted by the United States, France and other countries, most of those remaining in the camps have no chance of admission and are being forced to return to Vietnam. All but a handful have been judged economic migrants, ineligible for asylum.

Boat people protesting against their pending deportation staged a mass breakout from a Hong Kong detention center on Saturday after torching buildings, setting 53 vehicles ablaze and burning inmate records. About 50 prison and police officers were injured.

Britain hopes to clear the Vietnamese camps before the turnover of Hong Kong to China next year. A Hong Kong official said the rioting would not affect the deportations. Five flights to Vietnam are scheduled this month alone, returning 600 people.

The mayhem fueled public anger against the boat people among Hong Kong's mostly ethnic Chinese population. About a thousand residents from towns and villages around the burned-out camp staged a protest on Sunday, calling on the colonial administration headed by Gov. Chris Patten to establish a permanent riot police presence at the camp.

One reason for their resentment is that Britain has maintained Hong Kong as a port of first asylum for the Vietnamese while illegal immigrants from China are immediately sent back across the border. Most Hong Kong residents are immigrants from China or the children of immigrants. Both China and Vietnam are still at least nominally Communist, and there is little to choose between them in terms of respect for human rights.

It's painful to see people who risked their lives by going to sea in flimsy craft to escape from a dictatorship being imprisoned for years and then being forced to return to Vietnam. But it's not very different from the way the United States handled the Haitian boat people. The hard fact is that no country can accept unlimited numbers of immigrants - even if they risk their lives seeking entry. Only those who can show a reasonable fear of persecution if they returned can be spared deportation.


Other editorials in brief:

Commercial speech

COMMERCIAL speech is not afforded the almost absolute constitutional protections guaranteed political and artistic expression, but that does not give the government a broad license to regulate advertisements. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a reminder that if an ad is neither false nor deceptive, the government can do little to stop it.


Election in Tahiti

PRESIDENT Jacques Chirac's decision last year to resume French nuclear testing in French Polynesia, ending a three-year moratorium, set off a wave of protests in world capitals and rioting in Tahiti. But it appeared at the time that many citizens of French Polynesia did not object to the tests. The results for the territory's parliamentary elections seem to confirm that impression. Many Tahitians are more concerned about the economy than independence - or nuclear testing, which in any case has ended.



Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited Partnership

Rupert E. Phillips, CEO

John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher

David Shapiro, Managing Editor

Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor

Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors

A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor



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