A Place in the Sun for Vietnam's Boat People
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By Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
Thank you, Philippines. Thank you, very much for giving us a place in the sun.
With fireworks and a fiesta, the once sullen and segregated Vietnamese asylum seekers (AS), also called remaining boat people (RBP) celebrated their anniversary of Vietville, their permanent 10-hectare village home in Puerto Princesa City, Palawan. Vietville was set up with the help of the Catholic Church hierarchy and institutions as well as kind-hearted individuals from the Philippines and abroad. Philippine officials were not to be counted out.
So movingly, it is written in one document, that the
residents of Vietville "appreciate the privilege
and unique opportunity to be free and enabled to have
a life so rich in social concern. They hope to tell
the world about the boundless love that returned to
the 
remaining
boat people their inalienable human dignity. That
boundless love is none other than the Philippines'
undiscriminating embrace."
The Philippines received profuse thanks for standing up to embrace and take into its bosom 700 unwanted, stateless persons who had long waited to find a final home.
Points in humanity
During the anniversary celebration, Vietnamese children garbed in their native and Filipino costumes, their right palms on their breasts, led the singing of the Philippine national anthem and opened a night dripping with nostalgia, expressions of gratitude as well as prayers and good wishes.
"This occasion has a message for the world," said Bishop Ramon Arguelles, head of the Episcopal Commission for Migrants and Itinerant People (ECMI) of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) and who was instrumental in raising money (approximately. $1.3 million) for the village. "The last part of this century is marked with suffering, but we should show a sign of brotherhood in this part of the world. Our message is like that of the 'people power' (revolution) in EDSA. For this we gained points in humanity."
Also present during the three-day fiesta was California-based Venerable Thich Giac Nhien, president of the International Sangha Bhiksu Buddhist Association. The Vietnamese monk praised the Catholic Church saying: "We have heard praises for what you have done for the people. I'd like to tell the world of our admiration for the Church and the government of the Philippines." Turning to the Vietnamese, he said: "You are indebted to the Philippines. You have to be assets to this country."
Former Vietnamese refugees now settled abroad and who had helped make the Vietnamese village become a reality either through direct service or donations came in full force not only to celebrate but also to lend a hand to make the place a better community.
Progressive self-reliance
Vietville
sits on a 10-hectare area in Barangay Santa Lourdes
in Puerto Princesa City, Palawan. The land, which
is a few kilometers from the urban center, was bought
from private owners for 200,000.
Vietville is home to about 700 individuals who live in 155 housing units. The houses come in different sizes to accommodate the needs of large and small families, the old, as well as unmarried adults who have no immediate families.
The houses are made of bamboo, wood and sawali. The base and flooring are made of concrete. The roof is made of neatly laid out bamboo shingles. Each house has an average of two bedrooms, a toilet and bath and kitchenette. The village is neat and clean. It has an efficient garbage disposal system.
Trees have been planted and in no time, the place will be cool and green. There is enough water. Near the entrance of the village is the administrative office and the pagoda-shaped multi-purpose hall for gatherings and celebrations. There is a Catholic chapel as well as a Protestant chapel and a Buddhist temple. And of course, a bakery for their famous thin-crust French baguettes, even a noodle and lumpia wrapper factory. The vacant areas will be cultivated for food production when the El Nino season is over.
Progressive self-reliance, says Vietnamese nun Sr. Pascale Le Thi Triu, is what CADP is trying to instill among the residents. Sister Pascale heads the Center for Assistance to Displaced Persons (CADP), which is under the CBCP. On their first Christmas in the village, Sr. Pascale says, the people did not ask for anything that would bother the government. They understood that "if you are too heavy, the government would not be able to carry you." But being settled and secure in their residency has done wonders to the people's industry to improve their lives. There is a Vietnamese saying, "an cu la nghiep" that means you cannot progress unless you are settled.
Many in the community were farmers in Vietnam. There are a few who were fishermen. Many had experience in trading and in the food business. Their knowledge and skills, long dormant and unused, are slowly being put to use in a setting that is free and secure.
Many are venturing on their own outside of their village. A few, like Kim Hiep, are into jewelry making. A number are in the food business or work in cooperatives they themselves own and run. An example is the 20-room pension house and the Pho Restaurant near the airport. Some even sell cooked food on rolling carts. (A Vietnamese noodle dish in a big bowl plus one short baguette cost P29.)
The children (many of them born here) go to nearby schools and are adjusting well to Philippine life. The Vietnamese are not spared the stupid racial remarks but this is not often. Unemployed Filipinos say to them, "You take my job." That is why, as much as possible, these new residents are trying to eke out a living on their own. But Filipinos have not really been known to be virulent racists.
From RBP to permanent residents
In 1989, the "receiving world" wanted to see the end of the exodus of boat people from Vietnam. The Philippines, home to the United Nations-run processing camps for some two decades, was left with stateless people in its hands. It had done its part to provide hospitality and services. The UN High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) set up the machinery and restrictive policies to drive the asylum seekers home. A rigid and prohibitive regimen was imposed on the Philippine First Asylum Camp.
After the messy repatriation day on Feb. 14, 1996 the Catholic Church thought of a more humane solution. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the government gave the retruning boat people (RBP) options better than deportation. But the RBP had to move out of the PFAC to an open site under the Church's jurisdiction. This arrangement enabled many to continue studying and earning a living like legal residents. They could also opt for repatriation or work for visas peacefully.
On July 17, 1996, the signing of the MOU, the so-called chapter of the Indochinese phenomenon in the Philippines came to an end. More than 700 chose to be repatriated while 1,589 persons registered for residence in the Philippines. Around 350 applied for temporary residence while waiting to be reunited with their families in third countries. The rest opted for permanent settlement in the Philippines. These are the ones who are now in Vietville.
The "ODP" are the ones who remain in limbo. ODP (orderly departure program) means that these people departed from Vietnam through the auspices of the U.S. government. They are the "hold-outs" in the military camp by the sea in Puerto Princesa. There are still hundreds there who have nowhere to go.
For now, the only choice given them is voluntary repatriation to Vietnam. There, they were promised, their papers would be processed so they could eventually go to the U.S. But the ODPs refuse to take the bait. They would rather stick it out here and wait. In the meantime, CADP continues to minister to them in the old camp.
Permanent residents Huyn and Dung
Huyn, Ngochai, 41, spent seven days and seven nights at sea before seeing Philippine soil in 1981. He and his future wife landed on Brooke's Point in Palawan.
"The Philippines is a country of freedom," he says. Huyn is a salaried community worker. He is working in the village's environmental program. His wife works in the Vietnamese cooperative restaurant.
Le Thi My Dung, 37 and unmarried, is the vice chairperson of the village and receives a P7,000 salary. (The chair is Che Nhat Giao, an electrical engineer.)
Dung was among the 180 boat people who landed in a small Palawan island in 1989. She was a student when she left Vietnam. "We sailed for four days," Dung recalls. With her were two brothers, one of whom is now in the U.S. and the other now married to a Filipina in Manila. Her mother, whom she has not seen in nine years, is still in Vietnam.
"I chose to be permanent resident," Dung says. She would like to continue her schooling, she adds. A Catholic, Dung is seriously thinking of becoming a nun because, she says, "I would like to be of service to others." Dung has experienced what it is like to be at the receiving end. Now she would like to give back.
Integration, sustainability
Taking root in a foreign land is not easy. This requires an appreciation of the culture and norms of the new homeland. The Vietnamese are encouraged to learn the Filipino language as well the local customs and traditions. Activities are held to help Vietnamese and Filipinos reach out to each other.
The chapels inside the village are open to Filipinos who live around Vietville. A medical dispensary inside the village will also serve Filipinos. The village will not be an enclave, it will be a meeting place. The three-day anniversary food and crafts fiesta proved it to be so.
How lucky are the Vietnamese to have found a home in Palawan, so-called the Philippines' "Last Frontier" because of the island's relatively unspoiled environmental diversity.
Vietville hopes to be a showcase of environmental sustainability. The residents are working to put in place a zero-waste management, recycling of waste water and a program of environmental protection. There is so much to do for their new homeland.
At the center of the village is a well-preserved clump of swaying bamboo, symbol of Asian resilience. In its shade children frolic, their laughter carried by the wind to the distant hills.
Ma. Ceres P. Doyo is a Special Reports writer and columnist of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. She has received awards and citations for her feature articles and investigative stories. Many of Doyo's stories are in her book "Journalist in Her Country: Articles, Essays and Photographs."
Philippines: Deployment, Vietnamese
The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) reported in June 1998 that 559,227 Filipinos were sent abroad in 1997, including 160,302 or 29 percent to Saudi Arabia; followed by Hong Kong, 78,513 or 14 percent; Taiwan, 72,747 or 13 percent; and Japan, 33,226 or six percent. Another 188,469 were sent to foreign jobs on ships in 1997.
The Philippines is considered to have the most developed system for sending workers overseas. The system has several components. The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration charges migrants going overseas $25 each and deposits some of this fee into a fund to cover the cost of emergency repatriation. The Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995 requires the creation of a P100-million fund to cover repatriation expenses of displaced migrants, but the fund has not yet been created.
Both migrants and their employers contribute to a welfare fund that helps returning migrants to reintegrate, but experience suggests that many returned migrants experience long spells of unemployment, exhaust their savings and then migrate again.
Philippine President Fidel Ramos said on June 2, that he has issued an order allowing Vietnamese asylum-seekers rejected by Western countries to seek permanent residency in the Philippines. About 1,500 Vietnamese asylum-seekers now live in the Philippines, a third of them in a resettlement area called "Vietville" on southwestern Palawan Island. More than 40,000 boat people who fled to the Philippines after the Communist takeover of South Vietnam were resettled in the US and other countries.
"Philippines clears way for Vietnamese integration," Reuters, June 2, 1998.
