THE STORY OF KIEU PHUNG

Other Countries Can Learn from the Philippines.

Former UNHCR Field Officer, PFAC Palawan Jan Top Christensen and wife Kieu Phung

During a sweltering May evening in 1988, a 20-year-old Kieu Phung and five members of her family escaped from Vietnam. Kieu's father, a doctor for the South Vietnamese army, had just been released from prison, where he had been held since the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam war in 1975.
.

Being on the "losing side" of the war, Kieu's family was on the communist government's blacklist, and was frequently harassed by the police. She and her siblings were even barred from attending university, she said. Her family had little choice but to leave their homeland.

.
Kieu, now a medical doctor and wife of Denmark's ambassador to the Philippines, recounted her family’s story, as she expressed misgivings over the treatment of thousands of refugees who fled Myanmar and Bangladesh in recent weeks, and are still lost at sea. She said the ongoing ordeal faced by the Rohingya brings back memories of her own family's experience, when Vietnamese refugees were "pushed back into the sea". 

As the Asia-Pacific Leaders met on Friday in Thailand to discuss the Rohingya migrant crisis, Kieu is adding her voice to the call to save the lives of the refugees.  "I can understand how desperate these refugees feel," she said in an interview.  "It's a matter of life and death."  Kieu said other countries in the Asia Pacific region can learn from the example of the Philippines.  "I think it is our obligation to save their lives first. It is not acceptable to push them back to sea to die."

'Not destined to die'
On the night Kieu's family escaped, they were joined by 46 other migrants as they crammed into a 12-metre long cargo boat operated by smugglers. The deck was so crowded that there was only enough space to sit, Kieu said. One pregnant woman was allowed to lie down, she reminisces.
During the first day of their journey, they had a bowl of rice to eat, but that did not go far and they were forced to subsist on candies and lemons. Water was rationed, and each passenger got one sip each day from a container that smelled of gasoline. 

Every day that passed by drifting at sea, they became more desperate, Kieu said. "We had many children in the boat. My sister, who was 13, had a fever and she was severely dehydrated. We were so thirsty, so we took the [salt] water from the sea just to cool off our mouth."  Throughout the trip, many large ships that passed by rejected their cries for help, Kieu said. But somehow, she did not lose hope, and she felt that she "was not destined to die".

 **********