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“VOLLEYBALL NATIONAL CHAMPIONS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H15067-H15068 on Dec. 18, 1995.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
VOLLEYBALL NATIONAL CHAMPIONS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. Bereuter] is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, tonight this Member will address two very different subjects in the time available under this special order.
First, the subject of NCAA volleyball championship. Mr. Speaker, a year ago when the University of Nebraska Cornhusker women's volleyball team lost in the Regional finals, the team set a goal. The title on their media guide this season read ``One goal, one focus, one champion.''
All season the Huskers were determined to meet that one goal, keep that one focus, and be that one champion. This past Saturday in Amherst, MA, the Nebraska Cornhusker women's volleyball team ended a 32-1 season by capturing its first national championship.
The Huskers' victory is only the second time in the 15-year history of the NCAA volleyball tournament, that a team east of California has won the national title.
Since 1982 Husker volleyball teams have never lost more than six matches in a season, nor has any Husker team since that time fallen out of the American Volleyball Coaches Association top 25 poll.
And obviously their accomplishments continued this year. In his 19th season, Terry Pettit coached two Academic All-Americans, three first team All-Americans, and the National Co-Player of the year which is the award that is equivalent to the Heisman Trophy.
One goal. One focus. One champion. This Member and all Cornhusker fans are very proud of the accomplishments of these superior student-
athletes. Congratulations to the Nebraska Cornhuskers--the 1995 Women's Volleyball National Champions.
vietnamese boat people: don't prolong their suffering
Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, this Member has spoken previously about the plight of the 40,000 Vietnamese boat people languishing in refugee camps in Southeast Asia. This Member has described the damage wrought by the ill-conceived Section 2104 of H.R. 1561, the American Overseas Interests Act, which was passed by the House of Representatives on May 24. This legislation has given these boat people, most of whom have been determined to be economic migrants rather than political refugees, false hope of resettlement in the United States directly from the camps. This false hope has led to rioting in refugee camps and has stopped a very successful program of voluntary repatriation under which more than 70,000 of these boat people have returned to Vietnam. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and many objective observers lay the blame squarely on this legislation, the House passed provisions in the American Overseas Interests Act for outbreaks of violence in the camps and for the collapse of voluntary repatriation.
In an effort to break the current impasse the State Department is negotiating with Vietnam a program, called ``Track II,'' under which any boat people who volunteer to return to Vietnam will be entitled to an interview by the Immigration and Naturalization Service to determine once and for all if they qualify for refugee status under U.S. law. In this Member's opinion, the Track II proposal offers some hope of restarting the voluntary repatriation program, thereby decreasing the numbers of boat people languishing in the refugee camps and diminishing somewhat the pressure for massive involuntary returns which would lead to a humanitarian nightmare next year.
In a recent State Department briefing, we learned that the negotiations with Hanoi face some serious obstacles. I would urge my colleagues to lower the Congressional profile on this issue and allow the negotiations to run their course. Further action on the harmful legislative provisions contained in H.R. 1561 would only exacerbate the problems facing this program.
Mr. Speaker, finally this Member would insert into the Record an article from the November 29, 1995 edition of The Asian Wall Street Journal, entitled, ``Why Prolong the Boat People's Suffering?'' This article, written by Mr. Robert Van Leeuwen, the retired chief of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Hong Kong, makes a most convincing case that the biggest losers from the ill-conceived Section 2104 of H.R. 1561 are ``precisely those Vietnamese whose fate is the object of the proposed legislation.'' I commend this article to all my colleagues on both sides of Capitol Hill.
Why Prolong the Boat People's Suffering?
(By Robert Van Leeuwen)
In June 1989, the United States and 50 other governments at the U.N.-sponsored International Conference on Indo-Chinese Refugees agreed on a Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA) to provide humanitarian solutions for the continuing exodus from Vietnam. Six years later, CPA's achievements include tens of thousands of former ``boat people'' safely back in their country.
But legislation introduced in the U.S. Congress by Representatives Chris Smith and Ben Gilman pretends that history simply did not happen. Proposed last May, the legislation suggests that the last 40,000 Vietnamese in camps, all of them already determined not to be refugees, should now go through re-screening by an entirely different and far broader set of criteria to see whether they could be admitted to the United States as refugees.
In other words, the congressman would have us believe that hundreds of millions of dollars spent to implement the CPA, the continued provision of asylum in Southeast Asia, 75,000 persons determined not to be refugees safely back in Vietnam, 89,000 others resettled in third countries and a continuing flow of non-refugees back to Vietnam, was all in vain. That all this, achieved in a framework of internationally accepted humanitarian principles and standards, should be seen as null and void, and all the result of a biased and sinister design implemented by equally biased and sinister people.
This is clearly not credible.
But who pays the price of this ill-conceived initiative? Ironically, the biggest losers are precisely those Vietnamese whose fate is the object of the proposed legislation. Second in line are the U.S. taxpayers asked to subscribe to expenditures initially set at some $30 million, to settle in the U.S.A. some 20,000 Vietnamese already determined after elaborate evaluation of their stories not to be refugees. Then there are the returnees to Vietnam who would see thousands of those who chose to hold out in the camps suddenly and inexplicably rewarded by a new chance for a free ticket to the U.S.A. And after them, the still shadowy figures of those around the world who would be paying for an inevitable perception of lack of consistency and credibility in U.S. foreign policy.
Of course, no one ever doubted that implementation of the CPA would be difficult and controversial. For 14 years, following the collapse of the Republic of Vietnam in April 1975, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese ``boat people'' had been given temporary asylum in Southeast Asian countries of arrival pending their permanent resettlement elsewhere. Since all were automatically considered eligible for resettlement, the momentum of the exodus was huge.
Then Hong Kong, inundated by arrivals from northern Vietnam, and in cognizance of changed realities in that country, imposed a cut-off date on June 15, 1988, after which eligibility for resettlement was no longer a given. Countries of the region followed suit. So it was that, a decade and a half after the end of the war, a young fisherman in northern Vietnam or those with older ambitions in the South could no longer hop along China's coast to Hong Kong with the assurance of finding there the gate to a permanent home in the West. Instead, they had to tell their story to government and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) officials charged with the task of determining by internationally accepted criteria and through elaborate and expensive procedures whether their inability or unwillingness to return to Vietnam was based on a well-founded fear of persecution.
Essential to the international consensus on the CPA was a clearly stated agreement on the fate of those determined not to be refugees: ``Persons determined not to be refugees should return to their country of origin in accordance with international practices. . . . In the first instance, every effort will be made to encourage the voluntary return of such persons.''
In 1988, the UNHCR signed crucial agreements with Vietnam and Hong Kong that guaranteed standards of treatment for new arrivals and for returnees to Vietnam, including full access by UNHCR staff to both categories of persons. And by 1992, difficulties notwithstanding, an honorable end to the long saga of the ``boat people'' was in sight. The stream of new arrivals had dried up. Voluntary returns to Vietnam from Hong Kong alone, temporary home to the largest number of Vietnamese in search of resettlement, averaged more than 1,000 a month in 1992 and 1993, and continued at almost 500 monthly throughout 1994.
Last May, though, immediately following press reports of the Smith-Gilman proposal, those figures for Hong Kong and the region as a whole dropped to an all-time low since 1989 of 156 returnees in September of this year. A similar precipitous drop in volunteers for repatriation was observed in the spring of 1991 just after published statements by Orange County Representative Bob Dornan and the then Vice President of the United States Dan Quayle holding out false hopes of resettlement for Vietnamese regardless of the necessary distinction between refugees from persecution and non-refugees in search of better economic prospects. People still in Vietnam took to the boats again and looked in vain for the U.S. aircraft carrier rumored to be waiting for them in the Tonkin Gulf. It never came, but arrivals in Hong Kong, down to 6,595 in 1990 from over 34,000 in 1989, soared to 20,206.
Today the search for refugees among the Vietnamese has been completed for some time. The number of new arrivals dropped to virtually zero in 1993. The future for the 40,000 non-refugees left in Southeast Asia's camps lies in return.
Over the six years of the CPA, those responsible worked under the most intense international scrutiny imaginable. No one hesitated to jump to the press with criticisms and allegations of human rights infractions, nor did the press, governments, private voluntary agencies and a colorful variety of individuals hesitate to dump these on UNHCR's doorstep. Inherently, no system of procedures for refugee status determination anywhere in the world can be perfect. Reasonable criticism and allegations based on fact helped to improve and strengthen a humanitarian framework for action designed to alleviate, not to prolong or deepen human suffering. No one, least of all UNHCR officials, stood to gain by ignoring them.
Unfortunately, reason, vision and recognition of the facts do not always have a louder voice than easily heard outcries of wrong-doing based on ideological convictions, emotion or narrow personal agendas. It is everyone's responsibility to see to it that the former, not the latter, prevail.
It is both quick and easy to make statements or propose legislation from positions of public trust. It may be far less so to live with the consequences. In the case of the Vietnamese that means with virtual certainty yet another prolongation of their dehumanizing stay in detention camps surrounded by endemic crime, the torn-up papers of vain hopes and children who have yet to see a world beyond barbed wire. That is the price they pay.
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