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The Vietnam News

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Vietnamese boat people mark 20 years in UK

LONDON - Turn into Mare Street in London's East End where immigrant communities have traditionally settled and with a bit of luck you might come across ``Vietnam Town.'' Or so businessman and former refugee Pham Nam hopes.

Almost two decades after he arrived in Britain as a ``boat person,'' Nam has started a campaign to create a Vietnam Town comparable to the Chinatowns in many of the world's largest cities and capitals. In the clothing manufacturer's vision, concentrated in an urban strip about 700 yards (metres) long would be everything, from accountants to minicab operators, electricians to karaoke bars, hairdressers and supermarkets, to cater for the capital's 15,000-strong Vietnamese community.

And the local government authority seems to be taking Nam's proposal seriously. It has launched a feasibility study, due early next year, to assess how Nam's ideas, which include a centre for cultural activities and a themed art display, might be realised. Despite his forward-looking ambitions, Nam said the past should not be forgotten: ``It is important that we establish a school for our children to learn the Vietnamese language and their history.''

HISTORY

Vietnam's history is a saga of war -- against the Chinese, the French and, most famously, the Americans. Each conflict has resulted in a generation of refugees. It is 20 years since the first large-scale group of so-called Vietnamese ``boat people'' was resettled in Britain under Margaret Thatcher's then fledgling government.

They are known as ``boat people'' because when Saigon, the former capital of South Vietnam, collapsed to the communist north in 1975, thousands fled in fishing boats hoping to reach international waters and refuge in nearby Hong Kong, Malaysia or Thailand.
``We chose freedom,'' said Bui Tuyet Nhung, one of 10,000 people accepted into Britain under the terms of a 1979 meeting in Geneva. One of 600 people crammed into a wooden boat built to carry 400, Nhung, now the co-ordinator of the Community of Refugees from Vietnam in East London, shudders at the memory.

``There was a 99 percent chance that we would die trying to flee,'' she said. ``It was terrible. The boat was overcrowded. There wasn't enough food or water or air to breathe.'' She recalls being briefly separated from her husband and two young sons on the boat: ``Everybody was divided into 13 groups because it would be easier to control them. But it was badly managed and everybody got mixed up.'' Once afloat, the boat, its keel broken, began to sink under the extra weight. On the third day it was rescued by a British cargo ship, the SS Sibonga. ``We risked our lives...the price to pay for freedom is very expensive. Many people died,'' said 50-year-old fellow survivor Phan Phung.

She described life under communist rule: ``The police would visit you almost every day. They said you must inform on your relatives. Whatever you did, whatever you said, they kept an eye on you.'' In Vietnam Phung was a social worker who counselled Vietnamese women for life in the U.S. with their GI husbands. By 1979 her husband, a lieutenant with the South Vietnamese navy, had spent three years in a communist 're-education' camp, where men who worked for the South Vietnamese government were rounded up. ``It was a very hard time,'' she said. ``In the camp my husband was told only the communists were the best. They said you fought for the wrong government, you betrayed the country. Prisoners were made to feel guilty about the war. ``We had no future in Vietnam.''

IDENTITY

Around 27,000 Vietnamese now live in Britain. More than half live in London and the rest are scattered in communities across the country. According to Jack Shieh, who sat on the Home Office race relations advisory council for five years and was awarded an OBE for his work with refugees in 1993, the biggest challenge facing the Vietnamese in the next 20 years is holding onto their identity.

``The question is how can we maintain our roots and our language? We need people from the second generation to get involved in the community,'' he said. Many Vietnamese were content just to commemorate their survival, he added.
``Yes, we suffered in the past and we lost everything. But we've managed to overcome the difficult times, settle, rebuild our lives and bring up our children. And that's something to celebrate.''

Reuters - December 24, 1999.