http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_articl...256aa0a4bac438f

"Vietnamese Stranded on Remote Island Claim Refugee Status and Beg World for Help

Detained on an isolated island in the Indian Ocean and fearing retaliation from Vietnamese officials if they return home, Vietnam’s last group of boat people is begging to be recognized as such.

Fifty-four Vietnamese boat people now imprisoned on Christmas Island are begging the world community for aid and are reaching out to the Vietnamese-language media in the United States as well.

Christmas Island is an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean south of Indonesia. The island has a permanent population of only 433 people.

The Vietnamese boat people have written a letter that the Calitoday newspaper in San Jose, Calif. and other Vietnamese language papers recently published; their pleas are stirring the hearts of the Vietnamese community overseas.

The missive, titled, “Letter Asking For Help from Prisoners of Christmas Island, Australia,” explains that the boat people now face forced repatriation. Their boat, named "Hao Kiet," was headed for Indonesia but the Indonesian navy forced them back out to sea and pointed the boat in the direction of Australia.

The boat people are all southerners from the Mekong Delta region, and they are Buddhist.

They claim to be fleeing from religious oppression in their Communist homeland as well as being frightened for their safety because they are relatives of former South Vietnamese government officials when the country was divided in two in the Vietnam War era. They had been followed by Vietnamese police back in Vietnam and, facing possible arrest, decided to flee.

Boat people from Vietnam have not been accepted as refugees since the Cold War ended and the United States renewed its relations with Vietnam. In 1989 force repatriation became an accepted practice with the approval of the United Nations and many boat people were sent back from many asylum countries such as Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and others.

There standard practice is to set up reviewing process at the camps, and those who qualify as political refugees have a chance of being relocated into a country that accepts refugees. Those deemed economic refugees face repatriation.

What’s different about this newest group of boat people in Australia is that they have fled recently more than 14 years after the last of the boat people left Vietnam, fleeing once more, they claim, from political oppression. So far, only nine people from two families were deemed political asylum seekers on Christmas Island, the rest are facing repatriation to Vietnam, where they fear they will be punished upon returning.

According to Calitoday, a Vietnamese Australian who recently received a five-year jail sentence in Perth for human trafficking between Vietnam and Australia owns the boat.

The boat owner, Mr. Nguyen Van Hoa was allegedly in Vietnam spreading anti communist pamphlets, encouraging an overthrow of the Hanoi government. Those who helped him were allegedly members and their families who are now jailed on Christmas Island. When officials in Hanoi the Vietnamese capital discovered that Mr. Nguyen, who was a South Vietnamese army officer during the Vietnam War and a political prisoner in Vietnam, and his colleagues, were passing out the anti-communist pamphlets, they searched to arrest them in the Mekong Delta."

OMG, there's still boat Vietnamese boat people until today? That's so sad. What the hell is wrong with the Vietnamese government? Too much corrupt officials and lack of freedom!

Very low chance. Our country (Australia) and the fu-king d!ckhe@d prime minister John Howard is very anti-refugees and illegal immigration.

aw

boooooo!!!...