Vietnamese boat people

Vietnamese boat people (Vietnamese: Thuyền nhân Việt Nam) were refugees (a substantial part were Hoa people) who fled Vietnam by sea following the 1975 fall of Saigon, which marked the end of the Vietnam War. This migration and humanitarian crisis peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s before continuing into the 1990s. Between 1975 and 1995, almost 800,000 boat people arrived safely in other countries, while many others died at sea due to piracy, overcrowding, and storms. Mass killing by Khmer Rogue, re-education camps and the expropriation of Hoa properties by the Vietnamese government, economic hardship, and conflicts such as the Third Indochina War, contributed to the wider Indochina refugee crisis.

The boat people's first destinations were Hong Kong and the Southeast Asian locations of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. Tensions between Vietnam and China in 1978 and 1979 contributed to the departure of large numbers of ethnic Hoa people from Vietnam, many of whom fled by boat. Anti-Chinese sentiment and regional conflict further accelerated this exodus. The number of people who died is hard to establish because of the lack of reliable data and the political instrumentalization of the topic. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that between 200,000 and 250,000 boat people died at sea. The Australian journalist Barry Wain put forward the figure of 30,000 people dead at sea from 1975 to 1981

Southeast Asian countries grew increasingly unwilling to accept additional arrivals. Following negotiations and an international conference in 1979, Vietnam agreed to limit departures. Southeast Asian countries agreed to grant temporary asylum, while more developed countries assumed most resettlement responsibilities and costs. Consequently, from refugee camps in Southeast Asia, the great majority of boat people were resettled in the United States, Canada, Italy, Australia, France, West Germany, and the United Kingdom. Several tens of thousands were repatriated to Vietnam. The UNHCR coordinated initiatives such as the Orderly Departure Program, the Philippine Refugee Processing Center, and the Comprehensive Plan of Action to facilitate resettlement.