, jJAUSTHALIA
PRIME MINISTER
FOR MEDIA 8 JULY 1979
ELECTORATE TALK
For more than 40 years Australia has provided a home for the
victims of tyranny. Refugees came to Australia from Nazi
Germany in the 1930' s. After the Second World War, there
was a flow of refugees from the Eastern bloc countries.
Today, refugees are again fleeing from totalitarian oppression,
and from the economic and social disruption which communism
produces when it gains power.
The old refugees were created by the racial and expansionist
policies of Nazi Germany. The new refugees have been created
by the communist regimes which have been set up with brutal and
bloody ruthlessness in Indochina.
The Vietnamese government is methodically driving out people
of ethnic Chinese origin, as well as other citizens who do
not fit its narrow communist mould, at the rate of about
50,000 a month.
There are now about 350,000 refugees in camps in south-east
Asia, primarily in Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Indonesia.
This has created grave problems for these countries. The
international community has a clear responsibility to help
ease this burden.
For the people of south-east Asia, this exodus is one of the
great crises in their history. It is one of the great refugee
crises of all time.
The refugees are being resettled in Australia at a rate of
almost 1,000 a month. The United States is planning to
double its intake to 170,000 a year. France has provided a
home for 50,000, and Canada Hong Kong have each resettled
13,000.
The British journal, The Economist, has compared the flood of
refugees from Vietnam in 1979 with what happened to the Jews
of Germany in the 1930' s. The main difference, The Economist
reports, is that Vietnam's persecution has already claimed
more victims than Hitler's had by 1939.
The Vietnamese authorities, like the Nazis, are seizing the
assets of those whom they are exporting so that they leave
the country destitute.
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This barbaric trade, wQith its heavy toll in life on some reports
up to 50% of those who leave Vietnam's shores die at sea is
said to be earning the Vietnamese government more than $ 200 million
a year.
It was discussed at the Economic Summit Conference in Tokyo and
at the meeting of ASEAN Foreign Ministers in Bali. There is
to be another international conference in Geneva later this
month, attended by representatives of some 60 nations.
The refugee problem was amongst the issues discussed in the talks
which I have had in the past few days with the British Prime M~ inister,
Margaret Thatcher, and with the United States Secretary of State,
Cyrus Vance.
All nations need compassion and understanding in dealing with
this problem.
On purely humanitarian grounds, more countries should make places
available to these wretched victims of communism. But that is
only one side of the coin.
If we merely provide resettlement for the refugees, the Vietnamese
will not be discouraged from continuing to drive out those citizens
whom they do not like for reasons of race or because their way of
life does not, suit official ideology.
The Hanoi government should know it cannot continue its barbarous
policy of stripping a section of the Vietnamese people of hundreds
of millions of dollars, and then exporting their victims in the
belief that countries with humanitarian governments will find
room for them.
The long term solution must be for countries throughout the world
to bring weight to bear on Vietnam to cease this trade in human
life. The country in the best position to influence Vietnam is clearly
the Soviet Union, but there is no sign whatsoever that this is
happening.
Mrs Thatcher discussed refugees in the Kremlin when she visited
Moscow on her way last month to the Economic Summit in Tokyo.
She was told that the Vietnamese refugees were criminals, drug
addicts and thieves, and that they were a domestic Vietnamese problem.
It could well be that Russia welcomes this exodus from Vietnam as
a policy which, if pursued in its present massive proportions,
could de-stabilise south-east Asia and lead to the loss of the
economic gains made by these countries over the last Seven or
eight years.
There are those who say that nations should provide more aid to
Vietnam as the best means of persuading them to moderate or change
their policies. Up to last year Australia tried just that. lie
provided aid for peaceful reconstruction. / 3
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Instead, Vietnam attacked Kampuchea, where they now have
16 or 17 divisions, and escalated their policy of exporting
their unwanted people.
The policy of holding out the hand of friendship was tried
and was a failure.
That is why we suspended our aid to Vietnam. At the time there
were those who criticised Australia's policy, but other countries
have since taken similar action. The European Community has
decided to suspend food aid to Vietnam, and to divert it
instead to the refugees.
This policy is one that should be followed by other aid donors.
Nobody could claim that the need of the refugees is less than
that of Vietnam.