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Article: For refugees, dream is over Camps closing, boat people must turn back to Vietnam
- Article from:
- The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
- Article date:
- August 3, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1996 The Boston Globe. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam -- A half-dozen filthy youngsters squat
eagerly outside a palm-thatched hut on a canal of the Saigon River.
An old couple in obvious ill health peer skittishly from the dark
interior.
All listen intently as Vo Khanh, who spent the past seven years in
a refugee camp in Malaysia, sits in a tiny foyer paneled with
scavenged metal and explains why he joined the thousands of
Vietnamese boat people now streaming back to their native land.
His story, and those of many other recently returned boat people,
contrasts sharply with official versions of how this last sad chapter
in the history of Vietnam's wars with France, the United States and
China is playing out.
According ...