Refugees: Safe Ashore at Last

For most Vietnamese boat people, the suffering has ended

Only two ago, a tidal wave of Vietnamese refugees seemed to have engulfed all of Southeast Asia. Arriving in frail fishing craft in the waters of Thailand, Malaysia and other countries that proved incapable of or unwilling to shelter all of them, they were known as the boat people. They seemed to be the ultimate casualties of the U.S. defeat in Viet Nam. Peasants and fisherfolk, small shopkeepers and traders, as well as former soldiers of Saigon's army, they fled the oppressive Hanoi...

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