Vietnamese refugee art in HK
Recently I retold the story of Art in the Camps, a project by HK artist under the organization Garden Streams HK Fellowship of Christian Artists, to bring art into detention camps for Vietnamese boatpeople between 1989 and 1993. The project evolved into a range for children art classes, income generating women craft groups, music and dance groups and a camp-approved magazine in Vietnamese.
During the Q & A question, a person asked, rephrased here by me:
“Why weren’t there artists responding to the Vietnamese boatpeople situation through art?”
This got me thinking, because artists, especially community and socially-engaged artists, often have to think about where we put our effort.
So, let me give you a background of Art in the Camps.
Background
Hong Kong received the first wave of Vietnamese in 1975 generally with open arms. Many were housed in barracks and there was minimal interruption to people. Ming Pao printed a half page spread of photos showing smiling faces, children and families meeting local relatives, picking up aid packages. Although the instability in Vietnam was known, not many could have imagined that nearly two hundred thousands more would arrive in Hong Kong in search of a brighter future over the next fifteen years.
Over 100,000 boatpeople arrived between 1979 to 1981. The number of housing facilities increased from seven in 1975 to fifteen, several of which in densely populated area. Yet resettlement was swift, of the 84,006 arrivals between 1979 and 1981, 79,663 were resettled during the same period. However, the small but continuous number of arrivals kept the numbers of boatpeople at around 10,000 over the next few years.
Local sentiments about the boatpeople also changed over the 1980s. The boatpeople were considered more of an inconvenience than a major societal burden before the influx in 1988. The influx between 1988 and 1993 was different because resettlement was very slow, and locals were pushing for mandatory repatriation. In 1988, to deter further arrival, boatpeople were no longer automatically granted refugee status beginning on June 16. Under this screening process, the roughly 60% successful determination rate in 1988 gradually fell to around 6% in 1992.
The screening procedure and its rhetoric gave official blessings and form to local sceptics. Those who took desperate actions in protesting repatriation were portrayed by the media as being violent. Various groups protested new camps in their neighbourhood, and were also against the government using taxpayers’ money to house the boatpeople. The combination of these sentiments easily led to prejudice and hatred against the boatpeople.
Life in the camps is tough, but people find ways to survive. Yet the trauma of prolong incarceration was a ticking time bomb.
It was in this environment that Art in the Camps (AIC) began in 1989. There were children school-based and extra-curricular programmes, women’s income-generating crafts programme, material and exhibition support for practicing artists and a camp-approved Vietnamese magazine.
“Why weren’t there artists responding to the situation through art?”
The person who raised the question was determined to get to his point: “So, were the artists complicit?” This is a very broad question and likely do not have a definitive answer, but here are several observations:
A) Contemporary art in HK during the late 80s, for the most part, have not developed to engage societal issues
B) Those who were engaged in societal issues, is dominated by the Sino-British talks over the future of HK, and of course the horrific incident in June of nineteen eighty nine (hopefully this wording can escape the great-internet-wall)
C) For artists who may have thought about entering the camp, access is highly restricted
D) From a historical perspective, during the mid-1980s, the number of boatpeople gradually dropped to under 10,000; people expressed in the news and books that they thought the worse was over.
E) Generally speaking, who isn’t affected by prejudice in the media?
It is actually refreshing to get such a clear question. Were they (are we) complicit when we do not speak up or at in the face of injustice?
Based on the records, Garden Streams’ early members were connected to Christian religious organizations that had access to UNHCR and other NGOs. This opened the way for the artists to enter the camps.
One of the founders, artist Evelyna Liang describes what motivated her and others to begin AIC, “We all saw what the Vietnamese people were facing inside the camps. We asked ourselves, as Christian artists, what can we do? And we decided to share what we do best: art”.
The more difficult question for ourselves, is ‘what is our role as artists in this society today’.
