Vietnam: Heading for Home?

In the past 16 years 63,000 boat people have fled Vietnam to seek asylum in Hong Kong. Unable to accommodate them in overcrowded detention centers, the colony wants to send back all who do not qualify as bona fide refugees under U.N. guidelines. Last week, after two years of negotiations, Britain and Vietnam signed a statement of understanding in which Hanoi agreed to the return of nonpolitical refugees.

A key issue -- whether or not force would be used in the repatriation -- has yet to be resolved. Hong Kong officials implied last week that coercion would be used if necessary, but the U.S. reiterated its longstanding objections. "We will do everything we can to encourage and enable people to return home with dignity," said Hong Kong Secretary for Security Alistair Asprey. "Whether they do so depends on their own behavior, which we cannot control." Some 11,000 Vietnamese have already been induced to return home voluntarily by the offer of cash payments totaling $410 a person.

Those still left in the squalid camps -- some have been there for more than five years -- have made it clear they will not go peaceably, and have even threatened suicide. "If armed police enter the camp to force us back," said a refugee leader last week, "we will tie our hands and legs together so we are unified, and we will kill ourselves."