Word: thais
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With 67 other refugees, Nguyen Phuong Thuy, 15, slipped out of Viet Nam in a 33-ft. boat. The craft was well into the Gulf of Thailand and the presumed zone of safety when it was attacked, not by pursuing Vietnamese but by a vessel carrying eight Thai fishermen. The pirates kidnaped Thuy and another young girl, then sank the refugees' boat with the rest of the Vietnamese still clinging to it. "I can't forget the look on my little sister Tran's face when she slipped below the water," Thuy said later. "I still...
...roused by being drenched with a bucket of salt water and then raped again. Her kidnaped companion was treated the same way and then thrown overboard. Thuy was bartered, along with baskets of fish, to 14 other boats, where her ordeal continued. When the last pirates set her ashore, Thai authorities jailed her as an illegal immigrant. Two weeks later she was finally sent to a refugee holding camp in Songkhla in southern Thailand...
...boat people began after the fall of Saigon in 1975, when increasing numbers of South Vietnamese began fleeing the oppressive Hanoi regime in rickety fishing craft. By 1980, Thailand was overwhelmed by nearly 300,000 refugees from Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia. Government policy in Bangkok shifted, and Thai fishermen, who once came to the aid of the refugees, were given three-day jail sentences if they towed a leaking refugee boat to shore...
...Thai government, extremely sensitive about the fact that pirates are active in the Gulf, exerts enormous pressure on U.N. officials and workers with private relief agencies to keep the atrocities unpublicized. Nor have the Thais taken much action to stop the assaults at sea. One promising venture was an antipiracy unit, supported by a $2 million U.S. grant, that included two spotter planes and funds to repair an aging coast guard cutter. After some success against the pirates, Bangkok asked the U.S. for another $1.3 million in June. The Reagan Administration countered with an offer of $600,000. Thai officials...
...speed the process of decay in guerrilla ranks, the Thai government offers a generous amnesty program. So far this year more than 1,000 guerrillas in the northeast have defected. Those who defect are not asked to apologize or recant. They are generally given work on government construction projects or assisted with funds gathered by local merchants. Says Lieut. General Lak Salikupt, regional commander of the Second Army: "Persuasion is always more efficient than gunfire...