Escape to a New Life

In 1978, ethnic Chinese living in southern Vietnam suffered complete ostracism at the hands of the Vietnamese Communist Party. Campaigns of attacking capital, reforming trade and industry and sending people to the countryside for labor reform followed one upon another. In order to tear out root and branch the economic assets of Vietnam's more than one million ethnic Chinese, the Communists confiscated Chinese businesses, closed factories, and demanded payment in gold to allow people safe passage out of the country. Chinese had no choice but to gather up their old folk and children and take their chances on the raging sea.

The flood of refugees shocked the world and became a focus of Western media attention. The 2500 ton freighter Hai Hong carried 3000 "boat people" to the coast of Malaysia. Faced with this unpre-cedentedly large number of refugees, Southeast Asian countries all refused to allow the ship to dock. After over a month of strenuous appeals, the UN High Commission for Refugees finally aroused the concern of such countries as Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland.

The Federal Republic of Germany had never before received refugees from Indochina, but its legislature passed a resolution to accept 1000 Vietnamese refugees from the Hai Hong. In a military operation, helicopters took officials to conduct registration on board ship.

At that time I had already succeeded in escaping from Vietnam. After arriving safely in Indonesia, I sent a telegram to my parents in Saigon using a prearranged codeword, to let them know I was safe. Then my 62-year-old father acted decisively. After disposing of all the family assets, Father led my second and third brothers' families and all our relations, friends and neighbors away. They abandoned their homes and took to the sea, and the boat they rode in was the Hai Hong. Father boldly took the lead in registering, and a few days later it was arranged for them to disembark and go in buses to a military airfield near Kuala Lumpur, from where West German military aircraft flew them directly to the city of Hanover in northern Germany. They were the first batch of "boat people" to be given asylum. As news of their arrival spread, in the cold and snow shortly before Christmas, the military base was surrounded by a crush of West German media, politicians, and ordinary citizens. At that time East and West Germany had not yet been reunited, and the West Germans were extremely anti-communist. My father had led 60 to 70 relatives in escaping, the youngest of them his granddaughter of less than a year old. They all became news figures which the German media scrambled to interview, and my father was regarded as an anti-communist hero.

This photo shows the refugees shortly after they got off the plane, with blankets wrapped around them to keep them warm. My father Tri Huynh (with cap) has a vigorous, military bearing; the two children at the front are my eldest nephew Minh Chinh, who now manages two restaurants, and my second nephew Minh Thuan, who is currently studying law at Bonn University, and is due to graduate and qualify as a lawyer this year. Further back on the right, smiling, is So Ty, the wife of my second brother. She is carrying my niece My Y, who was less than a year old. Last year My Y passed the entrance exams for medical college. In front of the tree on the right, looking down (left of So Ty), is my mother. Sadly she died ten years ago of liver cancer, and is buried in a cemetery in the little town of Westerstede.

On International Human Rights Day in 1980, the Association of Vietnamese Refugees in Lbeck had this photograph printed as a postcard which was sold all over Germany, with the caption: "Starting a new life in the Federal Republic of Germany." My second brother Quang Ho sent me one in Australia to let me see the sorry state they were in at the time.

Today they have all built new lives, and Father's trials and tribulations are in the past. Now aged nearly 80, he is enjoying his old age in peace. Looking at this old photograph once again, it still makes me catch my breath to think how much more fortunate those readers are who live in peace and prosperity than we refugees who risked our lives in search of freedom.