ANDREW LAM, Pacific News Service
EDITOR’S NOTE: To most of the word’s refugees, the most accurate icon for the UN these days would be a shield and club -- not the more familiar flag showing two hands shielding a solitary figure. As San Francisco celebrates the UN’s 50th anniversary, some 40,000 Vietnamese boat people are being tear-gassed and tranquilized for a one-way trip home under the auspices of UN officials. PNS editor Andrew Lam is a Vietnam-born writer.
San Francisco -- This month San Francisco in honor of the UN’s 50th birthday -- is flying UN flags showing two hands joined at an angle shielding the lone figure of a refugee. A more accurate symbol would show the UN hands slowly descending upon the figure to squeeze it into a wad and toss it back where it came from.
For at least 40,000 Vietnamese boat people now in UN supervised camps and detention centers throughout Southeast Asia, the flag of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) now stands for gagging, tranquilizing and tear gassing them into submission for a one-way trip back home. And the boat people are merely prototypes for how the world body views some 23 million refugees, not to mention 50 million internally displaced refugees.
What shall we do with these global outcasts ?
Once, during the Cold War, many refugees who risked their lives to reach American shores reassured those at the end of the exodus trail that our way of life represented freedom, paradise. Back then Americans readily opened their arms to these poor souls to validate the myth, and to score political points in their constant vigilance against Communism.
But that old us-versus-them era is long gone, and America -- resigned to the role of global village chief -- claims to suffer from compassion fatigue. Overnight, refugees and illegal immigrants and migrant workers and even the domestic homeless have melted into an indistinguishable blur. Recoiling from our earlier idealism, Americans tell ourselves homelessness is now an inherent part of the New Disorderly World and something out of our control.
Meanwhile, we turn the delicate task of who gets resettled or rejected, who lives and who dies, over to the UNHCR, which in 1989 developed a screening process -- dubbed a Comprehensive Plan of Action. From the start, the CPA’s goal was not about fairness but about expediting the forced repatriation of stubborn boat people.
In theory, of course, the UN still defines a refugee as someone with a well grounded fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinions. In practice, the UNHCR has routinely screened out incarcerated Buddhist monks, montagnards trained by the CIA to fight alongside Gls during the war, and ex-South Vietnamese soldiers who still bear the sears and wounds of the persecution. UNHCR officials will tell you that any movement toward resettlement countries is movement in "the wrong direction."
Somewhere in its effort to screen-them-out-quick-and-send-them-packing, the UNHCR has betrayed its own mandate - to protect and feed the world’s outcasts. Once the shepherd who tended to his flock, today the UNHCR is the herder -- a hired hand handsomely paid to deliver the herd to the slaughterhouse as early as he can. Screening officials -- many with interpreters who could barely understand Vietnamese -- are known to demand bribes of offer sexual favors in return for political refugee status and a chance at resettlement. Other asylum seekers are screened out without ever having a chance to tell their stories.
To discourage refugees from staying and encourage "voluntary repatriation," UNHCR has recently barred social service agencies from its camps -- eliminating psychological counseling for unaccompanied minors, basic education, recreation activities and any other semblance of community life behind the barbed wire. Worse, it has looked the other way as Hong Kong authorities release Vietnamese criminal elements called "bear heads" -- back into the camps to intimidate anyone who dares to resist forced repatriation.
"The UNHCR is worse than the communists," complains one asylum seeker in Palawan, the Philippines, in an interview with Granta writer Philip Gourevich. "At least the communists didn’t destroy the family." The seeker had been screened out while his parents and sister had been screened in and have since resettled in the U.S.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, the celebration of the UN’s 50th anniversary promises to be an elegant gala, but to global outcasts of the world the music sound a sour note. The business of protecting refugees has turned into the business of protecting the West from the asylum seekers themselves. Perhaps the UN should fly a flag depicting a shield and club -- a more accurate icon of a weary free world.