The Refugees: Journey Without End

THE refugees who escaped from An Loc last week were the latest to join a swelling multitude of refugees who have fled from every region of South Viet Nam where North Vietnamese and Viet Cong units have been faced off against South Vietnamese soldiers and U.S. air power. Some 500,000 people have been displaced from the northern region occupied by the Communists, and the tide of refugees is still rising in the Mekong Delta provinces in the south. Since the North Vietnamese offensive began in late March, an estimated 1,500,000 civilians have been driven and burned from their homes and condemned to live in camps or in the putrid shantytowns that surround every city in South Viet Nam.

The biggest crush came in Danang, which swelled to nearly twice its normal population of 400,000 with refugees from the northern provinces after the fall of Quang Tri May 1. Fragments of families fill schools, pagodas, churches and old U.S. military barracks. Though the government distributes rice, there is never enough to eat, and women can be seen selling penny candy, gum, flashlight batteries, salt--anything to turn a small profit to fill out the spartan diet. When the bread trucks come, covered with flies, young boys sneak up, reach in and steal an extra loaf for their families.

Life in the government-run refugee camps located nearer Saigon is little better. The An Loi camp, on a barren plain 30 miles east of the capital, has more facilities than most because it is easily supplied from Saigon and the government has tried to make the camp a showcase for its refugee program. An Loi also benefits from volunteer doctors, nurses and students who have pitched in to help. But for the 13,000 refugees who live there, it would be hard to find a more dismal way-stop on a journey seemingly without end. The camp is filled to four times its capacity; when no more people could possibly be crammed into the 30 dormitory-style buildings, the government set up 150 army tents. The canvas tents have no plumbing, and the floors are bare earth. The tents also leak. Now that the monsoon rains have come, inhabitants have all they can do to keep dry.

Most of the refugees, who by and large are apolitical, are simply trying to get out of the way of the war. They are fleeing American air strikes as much as North Vietnamese shelling, since territory occupied by the North Vietnamese has been subject to saturation bombing. Families with relatives in the South Vietnamese army are especially fearful; they have been told by the Saigon government that the Communist troops will take revenge on them.

Though there are 500,000 "officially registered" refugees in government camps, the actual number is far higher, since many simply settle in with relatives or friends. Senator Edward Kennedy's Judiciary Subcommittee on Refugees estimated last year that some 5,000,000 people had been displaced at one time or another since 1965. Now the latest wave of refugees has created a host of new worries for Saigon, which has been forced to look for more funds at a time when U.S. aid has been cut back. The regime recently announced a new emergency three-phase program to care for the refugees. But by the government's own estimate, it will be able to provide only about $2 worth of food, medical supplies and living quarters for each of the 60,000 poorest refugees added to the lists since the current offensive began.

In some ways, of course, those who have been able to escape the fighting are the lucky ones. In long-threatened Kontum, 10,000 Montagnard tribesmen were reported trapped last week after the Saigon government ordered evacuation stopped. The ethnic mountain people have long been victims of racial hatred by the Vietnamese and official policy has been to evacuate them last--if at all.

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