Boat people
From Conservapedia
The "boat people" of Vietnam were the largest mass departure of asylum seekers by sea in modern history. [1] Estimates range from 250,000 to 500,000 refugees who risked their lives to escape Communist oppression, despite a 1 out of 3 death rate on the high seas. [2] Although some of the refugees were farmers, most before occupied Vietnam's cities.[3] President George W. Bush has used the humanitarian tragedy of the Vietnam boat people as a comparison to the devastating result of a pull out from Iraq before the government is stable. He said in a speech during the 2007 Veterans of Foreign Wars conference,
"One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens, whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps' and 'killing fields'," he said. "There's another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today's struggle — those who came to our soil and killed thousands of citizens on September the 11th, 2001."[4]
External links
- Vietnam's boat people: 25 years of fears, hopes and dreams - Scott McKenzie, CNN Interactive
- Boat People - The Journey
