Word: thailander
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...deaths dramatized the perils facing a growing flood of seaborne refugees trying to escape from Viet Nam. A few weeks ago, one group was attacked seven times by pirates, who took even food and water before the Vietnamese landed in Thailand. Several other boatloads were so desperate for safety that they forcibly boarded an oil-rig tugboat about 170 miles east of Malaysia. Still another 42 Vietnamese scuttled their craft just off the Malaysian shore, swimming the remaining distance so that authorities could not tow them back...
...scarcely concealed escape network has been in existence that allows people, especially of Chinese descent, to leave the country for a price-currently about 10 oz. of gold, or roughly $2,000, per person. "It's all organized by the government," says one Vietnamese Chinese who arrived in Thailand this month. "They want the gold, and they feel that we overseas Chinese are no use to them anyway...
Among the most common complaints are lack of political freedom, food shortages, and the extreme hardships in the "new economic zones," patches of jungle where city dwellers have been forcibly resettled. "Practically everybody talks about escape," says a former Saigon civil servant now in Thailand. "It's just a matter of being willing to take the chance...
...only the Vietnamese who show dissatisfaction. Even as the Vietnamese refugees increase, more and more Laotians and Cambodians seek to escape overland. For some time, an average of 3,000 people a month arrived in Thailand; in October, the figure doubled...
Deputy Premier Teng Hsiao-p'ing flew home to Peking last week after completing a dramatic ten-day tour of Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Burma. Meanwhile, in Canton, a British-made Hovercraft from Hong Kong skimmed into the harbor with a load of 63 tourists, inaugurating the first regularly scheduled passenger sea service from the British colony to China since the Communists took power three decades ago. In California, six Chinese scholars arrived at Stanford University, the first cadre of 700 students and researchers that Peking intends to send to the U.S. within the next twelve months...