Philippines forces boat people back to Vietnam

STEPHEN VINES

Hong Kong

The Philippines, once seen as the most hospitable country for Vietnamese boat people, yesterday made a chaotic start to a programme of forcible repatriation. Eighty-four Vietnamese were sent home as protests flared on the runway, with other boat people trying to prevent the aircraft from taking off.

On Tuesday President Fidel Ramos promised the Catholic Bishops' Conference that repatriation would be voluntary. Major-General Carlos Tanega, who oversaw the deportation, insisted that the men, women and children who boarded the Vietnam Airlines plane did so willingly. "These people really want to go back to Vietnam," he said.

However at least one man was seen to be bodily carried on to the plane while struggling fiercely, others were dragged.Meanwhile, protesters were dispersed by water cannon.

The Philippines, which has about 2,700 Vietnamese asylum-seekers left in a camp on the south-western island of Palawan, has joined other south- east Asian countries who set a mid-year deadline for clearing the remaining 38,000 boat people from camps. Hong Kong, which with 21,000 has always had the largest population of boat people, started a forced deportation programme in 1989. Other countries, such as Malaysia, have followed. In all cases deportation has met with violent resistance.

General Tanega yesterday voiced a complaint heard all over the region since the start of the boat people's exodus after the 1975 Communist victory in the Vietnam war. "There is a limit to our hospitality," he said.

The Philippines, however, has long been different from other "countries of first asylum", as those hosting the Vietnamese were known. The boat people in Palawan have been allowed to work, farm and fish, unlike their counterparts elsewhere, who are locked up in camps. However, the Philippines is one of the poorest states in the region, and the government joined Malaysia in persuading the Association of South-East Asian Nations to take a hard line on the return of Vietnamese.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has now virtually washed its hands of the boat people problem, saying that by and large those who remain in south-east Asia do not qualify for asylum. "The world will not see pictures of screaming refugees," said Alexander Casella, the UNHCR's Asia director, "because they are not refugees - they are illegal immigrants." Some 38,000 boat people remain in the Asian camps ,most of whom face deportation. It is widely believed that Vietnam is looking for aid as part of the price for accepting people back.