II  The Tragic Journey - Barbarous Piracy  

'Có lẽ trời muốn trao cho gánh nặng,
Bắt trải qua bách-chiết thiên-ma.'
 ‘God perhaps wants to train us for an important responsibility,
thus makes us endure tragic challenges.’
Famous Vietnamese Statesman Nguyễn Trãi  (A.D. 1418)  

The reality of the Vietnamese boat people’s journey is full of tragic experiences, endless natural calamities and brutal man-made obstacles. (Photo: B. McDougall)

These Vietnamese women had hidden from the pirates in caves on Khra Island for fear of being raped. They had been forced to stand in knee deep sea water for days, during which sea crabs ate away much of the flesh of their feet and legs.

 One of the most dreadful occurrences during the boat people’s tragic journey is the cruel pillage on high seas.  Piracy in the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand is not new; as far into history as the 16^th century, there were reports by British explorers on the operations of the local pirates, who smuggled drugs, illegal products and occasionally raided trading vessels. Piracy in Southeast Asia, however, only began to attract enormous public attention when the boat people tragedy was published worldwide in the late 1970s.

Some accounts put the statistics of piracy against Vietnamese Asylees as high as 70%-80%, i.e. four out of five boats encountered sea plunderers. Records of robbery on the high seas were collected from 1980 onward; and of the reported cases, the statistics showed within three years from 1980 to 1983, there were 2,283 rape incidents, 592 abductions and 1,376 murders committed by the pirates.[1] The statistics, however, did not include countless cases wherein all escapees on board were slaughtered, and thus no witness survived to report their tragedy. 

Most of the pirates were Thai and Malaysian fishermen, who believed the boat people were rich escapees with lots of gold and hidden valuables. They attacked the helpless asylum-seekers with knives and hammers and, at times, guns. The robbery against any single boat often involved two or more bigger vessels to ensure success or, at least, to minimize damages in case of strong opposition.

Resistance against the pirates was sporadic because the majority of refugee crafts were not equipped with weapons, and most escapees saw their lives worth more than their personal belongings. Although it was not too difficult to obtain contraband firearms in Socialist Vietnam, most boat people preferred to escape without even a small pistol because, in case the endeavor failed, they would face more severe punishments if found in possession of weapons. Moreover, Vietnamese Asylees had long realized that the loss of life would be permanent while the loss of valuables was only temporary; thus, they rarely tried to repel the pirates’ attacks. However, there are eyewitness cases of heroic opposition wherein the resisting boat persons were brutally murdered by the better-armed plunderers. There are also reported incidents wherein some bigger refugee boats did use their sheer force of men’s muscle, emergency flares and, at times, grenades to successfully ward off the pirates.

In one celebrated case, nineteen brave boat persons, namely Dr. Dương Chi Lăng, Trần Xuân Vinh, Lê Quang Phương, Hứa Thiện Hùng, Âu Diêu, Khuất Há Chảy, Ðoàn Văn Khuyên, Trịnh Duy Phước, Hồ Minh Tâm, Châu Chí Cường, Huỳnh Công Danh, Nguyễn Anh Lợi, Trần Khắc Ðức, Huỳnh Quốc Tuấn, Quan Chí Cường, Huỳnh Trưng Thuần, Trần Chánh Thành, Lê Văn Uyên, Dương Hán Minh, fought back and took over the ship of Thai pirates, who robbed them, raped the women and drowned their boat. Ironically, when they reported the brutal pirates' attack to the Thai authorities, they were indicted by Bangkok on murder charges and then imprisoned. International outcry over the charges, particularly from the French media, Association d’Aides des Réfugiés d’Asie and Médecins Sans Frontières, pressured the Thai government into releasing the detained boat people in December 1981. One of the incarcerated Asylees, Mr. Lê Văn Uyên, would have died from an ulcer if he was not discharged on time and carried by ambulance to a nearby hospital for immediate medical attention.

The pirates’ cruelty is unprecedented and their atrocious conducts against the boat people are unheard of in the 20^th century. They would try every means to rob a boat person of his or her personal belongings. They searched everyone repeatedly and thoroughly in their hunt for valuables. The buccaneers would be prepared to cut off fingers if a ring were not loosened out.[2] They would pull out gold-plated teeth in order to extract the precious metal.  Any opposition from the boat people would result in immediate execution. There are confirmed reports that resisting Asylees had their necks slashed and thrown overboard. And worse, to eradicate all traces of evidence, the pirates at times used their huge vessels to repeatedly slam smaller refugee boats to drown all victims on board.

One UNHCR report described an incident in December 1985 wherein 50 boat people were murdered by Malaysian pirates:[3] ‘The 80 Vietnamese, mostly from Ho Chi Minh City region, fled their communist country Dec. 12 (1985) in the hope of reaching Malaysia.  After sailing for four days, they were stopped by a fishing boat with an apparently friendly crew who offered to help them get to Malaysia.  Two men, one woman and three children were invited to come on board the fishing boat which then took the Vietnamese craft in tow.  Five hours later a second fishing boat arrived which about 20 pirates armed with knives and iron bars, boarded the Vietnamese boat and began searching the people for gold and valuables.  All men above the age of 17 were thrown into the water, even the two who had been invited aboard the ‘friendly’ ship.  Most of them drowned because they could not swim.  The women were raped.  After the pirates left, a man who had managed to keep floating by holding on to a jerycan joined the 28 women and children aboard and helped them to put up a sail again.’

The pirates operated mostly in an 18,000-squared-mile area surrounding Songkhla, a Thai southern province.  Bangkok had only two old coastguard ships to patrol this entire area, and thus the region was virtually a no-man territory. In September 1981, the West German ship Cap Anamur intercepted and stopped a group of 5 Thai ships that were robbing a Vietnamese boat carrying 95 people. The boat was just about 100 miles from Cape Cà Mau when its engine broke down.  The craft floated aimlessly for two days before it was seized by Thai pirates, who moved 33 children and 22 women over to one of their ships and towed the Vietnamese craft with 40 men on board to an undetermined destination. The buccaneers then searched the refugees and confiscated all gold pieces and valuables. Fortunately, before the pirates could do physical damages to the Asylees, the Cap Anamur came on scene and freed the boat people under attack. Various reports were filed with the local authorities concerning the robbery but nothing happened to the Thai fishermen.

Thai pirates raiding a small Vietnamese refugee boat.

On the sixth anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the Against Piracy Action (APA) committee was incepted on April 30, 1981 in Geneva and composed of many well-known humanitarian organizations such as Terres des Hommes, Médecins Sans Frontierès, Médecins du Monde, Écoles Sans Frontierès, Protection de l’Enfant Réfugié, Sentinelles, Bateau Ile de Lumière, etc. Five months later, the APA commissioned a ship to intercept the pirates’ operations and rescue Vietnamese boat people in Southeast Asia.

            In political circles, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok’s official policy was to deter the boat people’s arrivals, and presumably not the pirates’ violence. It was widely suspected that Malaysia and Thailand were using the buccaneers as a secret weapon to dissuade and stop the refugee movement. To protect Vietnamese Asylees from the pirates’ attacks, the UNHCR provided Thailand with an unarmed patrol vessel (cost US$160,000) in May 1980 and encouraged Bangkok to take initiatives to exert effective control over its territorial waters. In 1981, the Thai government received $2 million from the United States to establish an anti-piracy program; the fund was used to acquire 2 surveillance airplanes and repair 1 coastguard ship.  Subsequently, Thailand threatened to kill the program after a request for an additional $1.3 million in June was reduced to $600,000. Bangkok later accepted the UN-proposed annual payment of $3.6 million contributed by 12 countries to maintain its anti-piracy campaign.

With new financial resources in place, Bangkok’s special anti-piracy force was formed with three patrol ships, three small ‘bite’ boats and two surveillance planes. Despite the impressive man-and-machine power, the Thai anti-pillage works appeared to have been undertaken superficially. In one sad instance in November 1982, one of the two planes reportedly intercepted an attack on a Vietnamese boat by four Thai ships; but when the plane disappeared behind the skyline instead of remaining at the scene until help arrived, the buccaneers returned and continued their robbery and subsequently abducted 12 women from the boat.

Thailand refused any direct help from foreign countries to contain and eliminate the pirates’ operations.  Bangkok decided that its Navy could handle the problem and all it needed was cash - a lot of cash! The record shows that, while the anti-piracy program was operating, the Thai government continued to publicly threaten to shut down all refugee shelters and to prevent the boat people’s arrivals.  Bangkok announced that it would indict as illegal aliens all Vietnamese Asylees, who reached Thailand after August 15, 1981, and close all its refugee camps in 1982. Thai citizens were prohibited from helping Vietnamese refugees at sea and would face stiff penalties for offering assistance to the boat people in distress. In light of these factual realities, it was therefore not surprise to see a significant rise in reported cases of oceanic pillage after each anti-refugee announcement by Bangkok.

During the first five years in operation, the Thai anti-piracy campaign apprehended only 30 buccaneers. With the assistance of a U.S. regional anti-piracy unit and UNHCR consultants, the program became more effective in 1986 with 50 arrests and successful prosecution of 21 criminals, whose sentences ranged from 3-year incarceration to death.[4]  Statistics of pirates' attacks on the boat people also declined from as high as 70%-80% of arriving boats in 1980 to 44% in 1986 and 30% in 1987. 

Although the pirates’ barbarous raids on the defenseless boat people continued into the 1990s, however, the anti-piracy program destined to doom in 1988 because once again Bangkok implemented its push-back policy with increased intensity. Routine searches of 52 islands, on which the buccaneers previously imprisoned arriving boat people, were reduced to virtually nil. Unfortunately, international efforts by the UNCHR and the U.S. also appeared to have lost interests in protecting the Asylees from the pirates’ violence. A relief official told representatives of the U.S.-based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights that:[5] ‘It is ludicrous to talk about anti-piracy when the Thai government is doing all it can to prevent boats from coming.  Anti-piracy is in shambles, in the east and the south.  And international coverage of the coast and the islands is non-existent.’

In 1988, the Thai Navy continued to receive financial contributions from the UNHCR to protect the boat people but was allegedly used by Bangkok to implement its push-back policy.[6]  On June 27, 1988, Thai patrol vessels towed 3 boats consisted of 61 refugees out to international waters. The officers then opened fire at the refugees and caused the boats to sink. Two young Aylees, who survived the ordeal, were detained and subsequently repatriated to Socialist Vietnam. In another reported incident, the Thai Navy was responsible for delivering the helpless refugees into the hands of pirates. On May 11, 1988, 79 survivors, who arrived in Malaysia after being pushed out by Bangkok, recounted that the pirates were patiently waiting for their boat.  As soon as the Thai patrol vessel left the scene, the buccaneers immediately raided the boat and raped the defenseless women on board.

The Lawyers Committee For Human Rights conducted a review of the Thai anti-piracy program in 1988 and recommended the following actions to address many serious problems that its investigators uncovered: [7]  

‘a) The Thai government should grant full access to the UNHCR and U.S. Embassy anti-piracy and protection officers to interview refugees immediately upon arrival in Thailand or the islands and coordinate and share information on piracy.  Immediate access will facilitate the prosecution of offenders.

b) U.S. Embassy personnel should on a regular basis monitor Thailand’s border and coastlines, and develop a system of reliable information contacts.  Routine searches of the islands should be conducted and indigenous employees with multi-lingual capabilities need to be used…’  

As a result of Bangkok’s hesitance to enforce its law on the high seas and the Thai government’s avowal to deport Vietnamese refugees, the brutality of the pirates’ attacks on the boat people rose sharply. The buccaneers began to systemically destroy incriminating evidence of their robberies by murdering all unfortunate victims on board. Despite the rise in the number of attacks and reports by surviving boat people, there were very few arrests. It is imperative to note, however, among those few pirates who were indicted, there were several Thai Navy officers[8] - supposedly responsible for safeguarding the seaway - implicated by the surviving refugees for taking part in cruel pillage on the high seas.