Talk:Boat people

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Hong Kong To-do:
edit purge
  • Clean up all MTR station pages. They are literally all over the place. Two model pages are Tsing Yi Station and Sheung Shui Station. They each describe a feature special to the station, Station layout, exit, and connections, as well as neighbouring stations and the station "box".
    • We will also need plenty of updated pictures (e.g. removing all KCR-related images except those on the KCR article). Check that all pages have basically the same language structure as Tsing Yi Station and Sheung Shui Station. Links to location maps are good too. (Should also perform these checks on Chinese Wikipedia.)
  • Clean-up pages that link with TVB, especially its series pages.
  • people as "rubbish"

The following sentence in this article is anti-human rights:

Those who remained at the camps were considered the leftover "rubbish" waiting for the USA to take a final "garbage collection" before the inevitable forced repatriation.

If this is a quote, it should be attributed to whoever made it and a different opinion offered. In any case, why should lower class people be considered "rubbish"? Isn't this all about economics anyway? Some countries don't want to take people who might cost them some extra money to re-settle and integrate. Needs to be fixed with facts. Thanks Hmains 22:14, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

  • article says Chinese Vietnamese fled Vietnam after the Sino-Vietnamese War 'just as economic' refrugees', not because they were persecuted by the government. I believe it is the case (Chinese Vietnamese have told me so) that the Vietnamese government at that time wanted to get all Chinese to leave Vietnam and took active/forceful measures to assure that would happen (thinking the Chinese Vietnamese had more loyalty to China than to Vietnam). Could someone find factual documentation of this and, if true, change the article text accordingly. Thanks Hmains 01:14, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
I think that the author meant that they are genuine refugees. I reworded the sentence. DHN 04:40, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] South-East Asian countries

I feel the article might not be fair to the SEA countries, Malaysia in particular (possibly the others too but I'm not sure). This article implies that these countries mistreated the refugees, allowed them to live in poor conditions and absconded with the aide money. I have no doubt there were many problems and some of the aide money was misused. And there arevarious controversies, for example, it is often suggested and this is probably at least partially true that goverments largely turned a blind eye to piracy. Similar, the then Malaysia DPM (later PM) Dr. Mahathir once infamously suggested that they should shoot them which was later 'clarified' as should shoo them (away) although most people seem to think he did actually mean shoot them initially (I suspect this is probably true but I haven't researched it enough to be sure). However I have also seen various suggestions that many of the refugees in Malaysia were treated decent enough and lived in acceptable conditions. Definitely, a large number of refugees were processed through Malaysia (250k out of around 880k total apparently). These links may be helpful [1] [2] [3]. I also distictly remember someone, I believe he or she was a representative of some sort of the Vietnamese community in Canada or some other Western country thanking Malaysia. Nil Einne 16:15, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I suspect it went something like this. Initially, Malaysia treated the refugees acceptably when they were in small numbers. As they kept coming, the treatment probably began to worsen. However partially as a result of this, the issue came to the eyes of the Western community with resulting pressure increased on various sides. All this meant several things. The Western goverments began policies of ultimately accepting the refugees and donating money to set up the necessary processing camps in the SEA countries. The UNHCR and potentially other organisations began to get involved. All this resulted in the SEA countries (or Malaysia at least) realising they would not have to accept the refugees permanently (which none of them wanted), only temporarily (and many of the refugees probably didn't want to settle in the SEA countries either). And they would also largely not have to pay for the refugees themselves. Therefore, their treatment of the refugees began to improve again. All this is of course speculation and we can't include it as is. But I suspect it is mostly true so it might help direct research. Nil Einne 16:15, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New Boilerplate needed

"This article was written by an asshole. You can help by turning it from an angry rant into a legitimate, intelligent commentary." 68.88.69.204 16:27, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Poor sourcing

An estimated 1 million people were imprisoned without formal charges or trials.[1] 165,000 people died in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's re-education camps, according to published academic studies in the United States and Europe.[1] Thousands were abused or tortured: their hands and legs shackled in painful positions for months, their skin slashed by bamboo canes studded with thorns, their veins injected with poisonous chemicals, their spirits broken with stories about relatives being killed.[1]

The "source" for these statements is a newspaper article which references unknown "academic studies in the United States and Europe". A adequate source should be found for these numbers or they should be removed.

208.57.213.243 (talk) 22:17, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

That's from an article in the Orange County Register. That's a respectable source by any standard on WP.
It doesn't say "unknown academic studies". It says, "published academic studies in the United States and Europe." Most news articles don't include bibliographies but I think it's safe to assume the OC Register wouldn't be using outright garbage.
If you find another article (perhaps from a leftist mag like The Nation) with "facts" that conflict with this one then it can be displayed alongside it. In fact, that would be rather enjoyable.
-- Randy2063 (talk) 23:41, 5 May 2008 (UTC)