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The Hai Hong's passengers—mostly ethnic Chinese—represent a new type of refugee. There is some evidence that the ship and its human cargo left Viet Nam with the knowledge of either the Hanoi government or high Vietnamese officials. Refugees have testified that since July a scarcely concealed escape network has been in existence that allows people, especially of Chinese descent, to leave the country for a price—currently about 10 oz. of gold, or roughly $2,000, per person. "It's all organized by the government," says one Vietnamese Chinese who arrived in Thailand this month. "They want the gold, and they feel that we overseas Chinese are no use to them anyway."
Whether pay-and-escape is in fact Hanoi policy remains unconfirmed. But a number of refugees say that those who want to leave Viet Nam can simply register with a middleman and make a down payment in gold or dollars. They are taken to ports where they hand over the rest of the exit price, then are ferried to a ship just outside Vietnamese territorial waters. At least two such vessels have been used. One is the Hai Hong, the other a 900-ton coaster, the Southern Cross, which ran aground in Indonesian waters last Sept. 21 carrying more than 1,200 passengers.
Malaysia claims that people who leave Viet Nam in such fashion are not refugees but illegal immigrants who should be refused asylum. Others disagree. "These people," says one Western refugee official, "have risked their lives escaping what they consider intolerable conditions. The fact that they paid bribes doesn't make them any less refugees than were Jews who escaped Nazi Germany. Many of those people paid bribes too."
In any case, those who leave Viet Nam via what is called "the big payoff' still constitute a minority. While negotiations over the Hai Hong were under way, well over 4,000 new refugees arrived off Malaysia in smaller groups. Most were granted sanctuary, though by late last week police patrol boats were turning back many small craft.
The numbers demonstrate that many Vietnamese, from soldiers and officials of the old regime to simple fisherfolk, remain deeply dissatisfied with their new masters.
Among the most common complaints are lack of political freedom, food shortages, and the extreme hardships in the "new economic zones," patches of jungle where city dwellers have been forcibly resettled. "Practically everybody talks about escape," says a former Saigon civil servant now in Thailand. "It's just a matter of being willing to take the chance."
It is not only the Vietnamese who show dissatisfaction. Even as the Vietnamese refugees increase, more and more Laotians and Cambodians seek to escape overland. For some time, an average of 3,000 people a month arrived in Thailand; in October, the figure doubled.
Alarmed by the new tide of refugees, U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance last month called on the U.N. General Assembly to convene a conference on the entire question, a meeting now scheduled for Geneva in December. Even before that, the U.S. Congress will hold hearings on the refugees' plight and the possibility of higher U.S. quotas.