SPI
Bitter Tale of the Galang Camp
Vietnamese
Dies After Self-immolation Protest
By Reuter, 04/29/1995
against plans to send remaining boat people home, diplomats said on Friday.
The diplomats said Pham Van Chau, 39, died of burns in a hospital on Thursday on an island near the Galang Island camp between Sumatra and Singapore.
The self-immolation followed days of hunger strikes by several hundred of the Galang camp's 10,000 inmates.
"The man had been transferred to Tanjungpinang hospital (on neighbouring Bintan) and he died yesterday," a diplomat said. At least 400 Vietnamese out of a camp of nearly 10,000 have been conducting protests, including hunger strikes, during this week's visit by Vietnamese President Le Duc Anh, to Indonesia.
The two countries this week signed a memorandum on speeding up the return of those boat people who had been screened out as refugees.
All boat people seeking asylum are kept in a camp on Galang, which Indonesia hopes to develop as part of its Batam industrial zone.
Diplomats said Chau set fire to himself in front of a team of officials, including E.G. Rumayar, security director at the foreign ministry, visiting the camp on Wednesday.
Officials were not immediately available for comment.
Representatives from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) earlier declined to visit the camp itself for fear of prompting attempts at self-immolation. They said there had been no other attempts despite threats by inmates.
At least 150 people, out of some 8,000 inmates screened as due to return to Vietnam, had been treated in nearby hospitals for heat-stroke during the days-long protest, but aid workers said none were in danger of dying.
Indonesia said on Thursday it would go ahead with the return of thousands of Vietnamese boat people despite the protests. U.N. officials around the region are afraid of widespread protests on Saturday, the 19th anniversary of the capture of Saigon by the communist North Vietnamese, relief workers said.
The 1975 defeat resulted in a mass exodus of refugees from the country, many of them as boat people.
About 1,000 members of an international Buddhist order staged a peaceful demonstration outside Hong Kong's largest Vietnamese detention centre on Friday, urging inmates to refrain from committing suicide. A member of the group said they had heard some of Hong Kong's approximately 26,000 boat people had threatened to take their lives to protest the colony's deportation policy.
The influx of boat people into the territory has virtually ended and the number of boat people in Hong Kong's detention centres -- by far the largest concentration of boat people in the region -- has fallen from about 60,000 in 1991 to about 26,000.
Relief officials visiting Galang claimed inmates were being coerced into protesting by exile groups seeking the overthrow of the communist government in Hanoi.
But they said Indonesia had decided to take a soft approach to the unrest hoping to wear down the protest.
"The UNHCR lets the Indonesians handle the security, and they decided to be patient and wear them down quietly. No force has been used so far," said one relief worker.
¡@
:: close window ::