Last Refugees Sent Home To Vietnam

The last 500 Vietnamese refugees in Indonesia left for home Monday aboard two ships, emptying an island camp that for the past two decades had housed 120,000 boat people fleeing war and communist rule.

Armed forces commander Gen. Feisal Tanjung was on Galang Island to see off the refugees, who were rejected for resettlement in Western countries that have accepted 1.6 million Vietnamese since 1975.

The voyage is expected to take two to three weeks.

“Most of them are in fine condition, and they seemed happy to return home for things are better there now,” Brian Lander, an official of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told The Associated Press.

Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries have been expelling their remaining refugees and closing their camps under a U.N. program which has returned 82,000 people to Vietnam.