The Vietnamese Boat People, 1954 and 1975-1992 by Nghia M. Vo

Author:Nghia M. Vo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2012-06-21T00:00:00+00:00

Causes of Failure

These stories showed how risky an escape could turn out. Death or jail sentences could be the tragic consequences of a failed escape. This did not include loss of homes, belongings, jobs, and money. The most well designed plan could unravel at any single stage from the beginning to the end. Factors causing failures were multiple and sometimes unavoidable. Any trip with 30 to 40 complete strangers was bound to be complicated. Even being alive on a foreign soil did not mean the end of the ordeal.

The most important task was to get connected with a boat handler. Since everyone was eager to get out of Vietnam, groups of organizers had mushroomed all over the country to provide means of going abroad. Some were trustworthy and well organized while others were downright sleazy and disreputable. Of course, no one knew for sure which organization could be trusted until a customer dealt with it. Since most organizations worked underground to evade the scrutiny of communist agents, that same secrecy prevented customers from checking on the legitimacy of the operation. People were so desperate to get out of the country that they believed whatever the organizers told them. Even if they got cheated, they could not even complain to the government because they would go to jail for having attempted to escape.

The Viet Cong could be aware of the project since the beginning. Although organizers tried their best to prevent leaks or police infiltration, the system was not always completely secure. One passenger might have inadvertently said or done something that might tip off the police. Selling a house or belongings, the household head making trips to the countryside to feel his way around, pulling of kids out of school, or closing a store could make the Cong An suspicious. The Cong An had all the time in the world—all it did was to spy and spy more on its citizens. Its webs were as dense as weeds in a marsh. Once the details of the operation were known, the Cong An agents just showed up at the right time to catch crew as well as passengers. To prevent such a thing from happening, organizers frequently bribed the authorities, which then pretended not to be aware of the project.

Being a police state, communist Vietnam had a lot of informers everywhere. The police could spot any unusual gathering in the village, on the river, or around the coastline and drop by to check out what was going on. The government even placed two of their agents in any fishing boat going on the ocean. Such agents caught Jade’s boat in Vietnamese territorial waters. They were given 30 bars of gold along with jewelry but still were not happy about the bribe. They then towed the boat back to land and imprisoned all the passengers. The communists became unhappy with the unequal sharing of the bribes and argued bitterly with each other. To prevent their superiors from launching any investigation into this matter, they decided to release all the prisoners two weeks later.

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