Quote:
Originally Posted by JOGK
go indonesia find vietnamese?  |
Bro Jogk, specially for you. 
detail found at other website..
Galang - The Island of Both Hope and Hell
Galang Island rests quietly in the calm sea, indistinguishable from thousands of other green Indonesian islands near the Equator south of Singapore. But for tens of thousands of Vietnamese "boat people," the United Nations refugee camp on this island represented a single, thin ray of hope. For most of those who boarded small, rickety boats to escape Vietnam after the war in search of new and happier lives, Galang will not be what they hoped to find.
Laying a thick trail of oily diesel smoke low across the glassy sea, the noisy boat violates nature's tranquility as it slices toward the wooden dock on this tiny, emerald isle. One would never suspect this forested point of land protruding unassumingly from the warm ocean was be home, at any one time, to nearly 20,000 desperate people who had no idea what their futures would hold. They risked everything in the belief that their new lives, or the lives they hoped to live someday in another country, would prove better than those they left behind.
The people who arrived on Galang already passed a difficult test. They rolled the dice on a dangerous ocean voyage and won. Many others lost that gamble. Pirates troll the seas in search of easy prey, and often find it. Many Vietnamese were robbed, killed or raped shortly after they gathered their meager possessions and set off in the cloak of darkness in search of freedom and opportunity. A small shrine on the island pays tribute to three women who, after suffering the humiliation of rape during their journey, took their own lives.
Statistics from United Nation shows that 850,000 refugees have settled in foreign nations, equal to that number are 850,000 victims, eternally resting along their journey to find freedom and happiness. There are many bitter tales to tell, on how the courage and faith brought the survivors to better living environment. At the same times, many forgotten souls who are the fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and friends of the fortunate survivors, cannot make it, but rested in the remote forests or deep in the ocean bed.
How Galang Camp Came About
The Vietnamese refugee camp on Galang Island in Riau province of Batam, Indonesia, have many bitter tales to tell of the tragedy that befell countless victims of the conflict between two opposing ideologies at the peak of the Cold War.
More than 250,000 boat people who made the perilous trip to escape the war between communist North Vietnam, and first France, and then America in South Vietnam, may have arrived on this island as refugees. They left their country in wooden boats. Hundreds of refugees were packed like sardines in boats capable of carrying only around a dozen passengers. The first Vietnamese boat, carrying 24 refugees, reached West Bunguran in the Riau Islands on May 22, 1975. The refugees used as a guide the flames from an oilfield in Udang. They staked their lives to come to Galang, braving the huge waves of the South China Sea.
More and more refugees arrived that numbered as many as 250,000, housed in a number of different places: Air Baja, Tanjung Unggat and East Bintan. In 1979, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) took the responsibility of caring the refuggee and decided, after reaching an agreement with the Indonesian government, to setup a refugee camp on an 80-hectare site on Galang island. From then on, Galang Camp was born.