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Vietnamese boat people refers to refugees who fled Vietnam by boat and ship after the Vietnam War, especially during 1978 and 1979, but continuing until the early 1990s. The term is also often used generically to refer to all the Vietnamese (about 2 million) who left their country by any means between 1975 and 1995 (see Indochina refugee crisis). This article uses "boat people" to apply only to those who fled Vietnam by boat. The number of boat people leaving Vietnam and arriving safely in another country totalled almost 800,000 between 1975 and 1995. Many of the refugees failed to survive the passage, facing danger and hardship from pirates, over-crowded boats, and storms. The boat people's first destinations were the Southeast Asian countries of Hong Kong (then a British crown colony), Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The mass flight of hundreds of thousands of boat people from Vietnam in 1978 and 1979 caused an international humanitarian crisis with the Southeast Asian countries increasingly unwilling to accept more boat people on their shores. After negotiations and an international conference in 1979, Vietnam agreed to limit the flow of people leaving the country, the Southeast Asian countries agreed to admit the boat people temporarily, and the rest of the world, especially the developed countries, agreed to assume most of the costs of caring for the boat people and to resettle them in their countries. From refugee camps in Southeast Asia, the great majority of boat people were resettled in developed countries, more than one-half in the United States and most of the remainder in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Several tens of thousands were repatriated to Vietnam, either voluntarily or involuntarily. Programs and facilities to carry out resettlement included the Orderly Departure Program, the Philippine Refugee Processing Center, and the Comprehensive Plan of Action. ==Background== The Vietnam War ended on April 30, 1975 with the Fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese Army and the evacuation of more than 130,000 Vietnamese closely associated with the United States or the South Vietnamese regime began. Most of the evacuees were resettled in the United States in Operation New Life and Operation New Arrivals. In 1975, communists also took over in Cambodia and Laos, engendering a steady flow of refugees fleeing all three countries.〔(''State of the World's Refugees, 2000'' ) United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, pp. 81-84, 87, 92, 97; accessed 8 Jan 2014〕 After the Saigon evacuation, the numbers of Vietnamese leaving their country remained relatively small until mid-1978. The cause of the growing numbers of refugees were the punitive policies of Vietnam. One million people, especially those associated with the former government of South Vietnam, were sent to re-education camps, often for several years.〔Anh Do and Hieu Tran Phan, (Camp Z30-D: The Survivors ), ''Orange County Register'', 29 April 2001.〕 Another million people, mostly city dwellers, "volunteered" to live in "New Economic Zones" where they were to survive by reclaiming land and clearing jungle to grow crops.〔Desbarats, J. "Population Redistribution in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam" ''Population and Development Review, Vol 13, No 1, 1987, pp. 43-76〕 In addition, the Vietnamese government may have carried out 100,000 extrajudicial executions from 1975 to 1985.〔Desbarats, Jacqueline "Represssion in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Executions and Population Relocations" from ''The Vietnam Debate'' (1990) by John Morton Moore http://jim.com/repression.htm, accessed 8 Jan 2014〕 Repression was especially severe on the Hoa, the ethnic Chinese population of Vietnam.〔Butterfield, Fox, ("Hanoi Regime Reported Resolved to Oust Nearly All Ethnic Chinese," ) ''The New York Times,'' July 12, 1979.〕〔Kamm, Henry, ("Vietnam Goes on Trial in Geneva Over its Refugees," ) ''The New York Times,'' July 22, 1979.〕 The Hoa controlled much of the retail trade in South Vietnam and the communist government increasingly levied them with taxes, restrictions on trade, and confiscations of their businesses. In May 1978, the Hoa began to leave Vietnam in large numbers for China, initially by land. By the end of 1979, resulting from the Sino-Vietnamese War, 250,000 Hoa had sought refuge in China and many tens of thousands more were among the boat people scattered all over Southeast Asia and in Hong Kong.〔Thompson, Larry Clinton ''Refugee Workers in the Indochina Exodus'' Jefferson, NC: MacFarland Publishing Company, 2010, pp. 142-143〕 The Vietnamese government and its officials profited from the outflow of refugees, especially the often well-to-do Hoa. The price for obtaining exits permits, documentation, and a boat or ship, often derelict, to leave Vietnam was reported to be the equivalent of $3,000 for adults and half that for children. These payments were often made in the form of gold bars. Many poorer Vietnamese left their country secretly without documentation and in flimsy boats, and these were the most vulnerable to pirates and storms while at sea.〔"Special Study on Indochina Refugee Situation -- July 1979", Douglas Pike Collection, The Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University, http://www.virtual.vietnam.ttu.edu/cgi-bin/starfetch.exe?c3WGk7fZGwC.5GSATuRwDvOhJJrHoi37YUc3lHzCxC5@Dg6Q@i.EMsVl.BwT.mM49B2oJjiYBplFyq.OeCcgrOYQN8lbdw@dsxmaCfsxVMY/2123309004.pdf, accessed 8 Jan 2014; ''Far Eastern Economic Review'' December 22, 1978, p. 12〕 There were many methods employed by Vietnamese citizens to leave the country. Most were secret and done at night; some involved the bribing of top government officials.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Cultures - Canadian Museum of History )〕 Some people bought places in large boats that held up to several hundred passengers. Others boarded fishing boats (fishing being a common occupation in Vietnam) and left that way. One method used involved middle-class refugees from Saigon, armed with forged identity documents, traveling approximately 1,100 km to Danang by road. On arrival, they would take refuge for up to two days in safe houses while waiting for fishing junks and trawlers to take small groups into international waters. Planning for such a trip took many months and even years. Although these attempts often caused a depletion of resources, people usually had several false starts before they managed to escape.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Vietnamese boat people」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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