SPEAKERS Refugees Relate Experiences By Charlotte Nichols Hoya Staff Writer

Two speakers described their experiences as refugees Tuesday night, kicking off the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs’ three-day symposium, “Refugees: The Long Road To Protection.”

Currently working for the International Campaign for Tibet in Washington, D.C., Tenzin W. Dhongthog discussed his parents’ flight from Tibet when the Chinese communist regime invaded. Bich Ngoc, a Vietnamese refugee who has since written many works and led several organizations advocating human rights for Vietnamese, also spoke Tuesday.

Focusing on the personal side of forced migration, both speakers emphasized the importance of maintaining a sense of home culture in refugee communities in the dialogue entitled, “Refugees: The Crisis Brought To Life.”

“For anyone to be able to speak their own language is very important for their identity,” Dhongthog said. “A lot of Tibetans want to come to America because of money – there’s more opportunity for success. But it’s easier to lose your culture here.”

When the Chinese arrived in 1959, 80,000 Tibetans made the dangerous trek across mountains and through harsh weather to Dharamsala, a town serving as a reception center in India, Dhongthog said. Many refugees arrive in India frostbitten and with only the shirts on their back. Still parents brave the journey to offer their kids an education and most are willing to go solely to visit the Dalai Lama, who currently resides in India as a refugee himself, Dhongthog said.

“The Dalai Lama considers India like a brother because it was a place where we could bring our culture to survive. And for that, we owe India everything,” Dhongthog said.

Born in Dharamsala in 1972 after his parents had made the journey across the border, Dhongthog attended an Indian school until age 12. He then transferred to a Tibetan school for a few years and finally a high school where he was the only Tibetan in the school.

“Looking back, I think it was really hard for me to balance the two different cultures,” he said. “The Tibetan culture is really surviving outside of Tibet because in Tibet, we don’t have the freedom to practice religion. Hopefully we will be able to take our culture back there some day.”

According to Dhongthog, there are currently more Chinese in Tibet than Tibetans.

Dhongthog came to Seattle in 1984 where he was a founding member of the Students for a Free Tibet Chapter at the University of Washington.

Although there are currently 9,000 Tibetans in the U.S., Dhongthog said he believes the struggle of Tibetan refugees is far from over if the culture is to survive.

“We still need support, because we need to go back to Tibet,” he said.

The U.S. government’s support for refugees also aided in bringing Nguyen into America when communism entered Vietnam, Ngoc said. In 1975 President Gerald Ford deemed 137,000 Vietnamese “vulnerable,” in Vietnam, meaning they were valuable enough to be protected and should be granted permission to come to the U.S. Nguyen said he was chosen as one of the 137,000 to be protected because of his academic experience and background.

Of the 137,000 chosen, however, only 35,000 were actually able to escape. Nguyen said he escaped first by running through fields with 26 other refugees, during which time they were robbed of what they had brought with them. They then boarded a midnight flight where the children were given sleeping pills to keep them from crying and making noise. According to Nguyen, they finally paid fishermen to use their boats and set out to sea, hoping to be picked up eventually by some Americans.

“Basically, all we knew is that we were fleeing communism. We didn’t know where we were going,” he said.

The refugees would wave to any passing boats in hopes that one would stop and pick them up, and that it wouldn’t be the communists.

Nguyen was picked up by an American cargo boat with a capacity for 1,080 passengers. By the time it reached America, it had over 7,000 on board.

For seven nights and days, the refugees were forced to standing room only, with no opportunity to bathe and only baskets on the side of the boat for toilets.

“American planes would throw down rice and frozen hamburgers for food, but there was no room on the boat to cook so they threw it all into these big bathtubs and stirred it all together until it was gooey. It was pretty inedible,” Nguyen said.

“We were among the very first `boat people,'” he said. “That name became famous in refugee history.”

The happiness wasn’t instantaneous upon the arrival in America, however, because the Vietnamese were disillusioned by the poor job opportunities available, Nguyen said. He sent in dozens of resumes for jobs, but only received seven responses – “all no’s.”

“Pretty soon we realized we had to accept anything. To make ends meet, we had to start mowing lawns and washing dishes,” Nguyen said.

Luckily, Nguyen was a writer and started working on a book. When he received his first paycheck for $1,500, he was finally able to buy bowls and chairs, but all second-hand.

“It is quite a blow to your pride,” he said.

According to Nguyen, however, the 2.5 million refugees in America have a larger total income than the 80 million Vietnamese still in Vietnam.

The policies that helped these refugees succeed once in the U.S. were left out of the discussion on Tuesday night, however, because they were the focus of the second part of the three-day series, “A Forum For the Times.”

“We thought we needed both sides to balance things,” GJIA Director of Campus and Media Relations Melissa Cardinal (SFS ’04) said.

“I think we need to have both perspectives; it’s interesting to hear what the experts say because they’ve studied the issue and you also need the first-hand stories.” During the panel discussion on Wednesday, three policy experts discussed the issues surrounding both past and present U.S. refugee policy.

Director of the U.S. Committee for Refugees Bill Frelick focused on the U.S.’s current policy of giving out visas, especially in light of recent growth of Afghan refugees. Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace Eric Schwartz continued the discussion of Afghan refugees by looking into past U.S. policies and describing what lessons could be learned.

“The policy of the U.S. in the past has always been advocating for other countries to let refugees in, but now they’re stuck in a situation where they have to react and decide how to handle this,” Cardinal said. “[Schwartz] was saying it would be kind of ironical if they didn’t follow the policies they had advocated.”

Director of Government Relations Wendy Young discussed the rights of women and children refugees, saying that they make up 80 percent of the refugee population.

“There are reports already of about 40 rapes of Afghan refugees in camps. She said we really should have more systems in place in the camps because there’s not that much being done about it,” Cardinal said.

The three different approaches to examining the refugee situation in the U.S. – present policy, past policy and lessons, and women’s policy – “all came together in the end,” Cardinal said.

The three-day symposium closed last night with a speech by Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and igration Alan J. Kreczko. Kreczko looked at international approaches to dealing with refugee struggles, as well as what still needs to be accomplished in his speech, “The Road Ahead.”

“He [wanted] to keep it more open, and look at what’s happened in the past with refugees and what can be done to protect them in the future,” Cardinal said.