"Have Pity on Us, Let us Land"

September 27, 2021 9:50 AM

The Skyluck Journals. "In 1979, the Skyluck carried 2,700 refugees fleeing Vietnam into the Hong Kong harbour, where they were forced to remain on board for more than four months. Andrew Nguyen and his family were among them. Forty years later, his mother's journals reveal their story." "'By the late ‘70s, people were fleeing the country altogether because of lack of food and jobs. My parents were labelled co-conspirators of the previous government. But even talking about escaping could mean imprisonment. Quietly, my parents started discussing how they would leave. My mom was worried we would die at sea. My dad looked at her, and replied with a firm sincerity, “We will go together. If we die, we die together.'”"

"It has been 20 days. There was sudden news that the captain attempted to leave the ship. Panic struck everyone. The younger men were asked to guard the lifeboats on deck and to surround the captain’s quarters. We are determined to land in Hong Kong. At 12:30 in the morning, we arrived in Hong Kong harbour without being spotted by the coast guard. But one hour later, we were discovered. We were surrounded and forced to leave the harbour."

"With the Skyluck anchored off Lamma Island, the refugees were desperately trying to get the world to take notice of their plight. They wrote messages on the side of the ship: “Have pity on us. Let us land.” They wrote letters to the UN high commissioner. When those efforts landed on deaf ears, several young men tried to swim to Lamma Island in an attempt to deliver messages to the media. Most of them were rounded up and sent back to the ship. One man drowned. Then they staged hunger strikes. But despite all of it, nothing. Finally, they gathered one night to make an ultimate decision: cut the Skyluck’s anchor chain. With a storm on the horizon, the ship might be pushed towards shore, or back out to sea."

posted by storybored (4 comments total)

That's a really incredible story, one that I wasn't familiar with.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:18 AM on September 27, 2021

Powerful stuff. Thanks for posting it.
posted by Bella Donna at 11:24 AM on September 27, 2021

Much gratitude. This is part of my family circle by marriage and the member of the family does not choose to discuss the experience, this information confirms much of what I've learned from other sources. Really appreciate this, thank you.
posted by elkevelvet at 3:14 PM on September 27, 2021 [3 favorites]

The colonial Hong Kong government of the time wasn’t very interested in generating sympathy for the refugees, according to this opinion piece from March 1979, “Why the Skyluck is ignored”, submitted to the South China Morning Post by journalist and author Derek Maitland(pdf):

…There has been a total information blackout on the refugees, an official quarantine of the Huey Fong, the detention camps, the refugee centres and the Skyluck that has denied the public any personal contact with these people and effectively reduced them to dehumanised newspaper statistics.

At the same time, there has been absolutely no attempt by our Government officials to counter the illfounded, damaging and scurrilous letters to the press from various private citizens labelling these people as racketeers, blackmarketeers, pimps, and potential wreckers of our illustrious society.

…

Could it be that by fraternising directly with these people we may find, much to our surprise, that they are human beings like ourselves…?
posted by mdonley at 3:23 PM on September 27, 2021 [3 favorites]