PM should follow in father’s footsteps
As children of Vietnamese refugees, we believe Trudeau must do more for Afghan migrants and refugees
As the world watches the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan unfold, Canada says it has tried its “best efforts” to provide aid. On Aug. 13, the “country of immigrants” announced it would accept 20,000 Afghan refugees — a paltry number and less than the amount hosted by Pakistan, Iran, Germany, Turkey, Austria, France, Greece and Sweden in 2020 alone.
On Aug. 26, Canada’s airlift missions to evacuate people out of Kabul ended five days ahead of the U.S. scheduled withdrawal. The evacuation resulted in roughly 3,700 people leaving Kabul on Canadian planes — a third of the number of people evacuated by the U.K. and less than 4 per cent compared to the number evacuated by the U.S. Canada’s evacuation attempts were met with swift criticism with former allied Afghan interpreters claiming they were ashamed to serve the Canadian Forces.
For a country with direct responsibility for the current conditions in Afghanistan, Canada’s efforts have been a colossal failure. Many Afghan people will be left behind to face an uncertain future under the Taliban. As children of Vietnamese refugees, we can only imagine the frustration, anguish and sense of betrayal that many people with friends and family in Afghanistan must be going through. These are sentiments that are unfortunately all too familiar to refugee diaspora communities in Canada.
For some in the Vietnamese community, the current news coverage of Afghanistan brings back traumatic memories of the Fall of Saigon in 1975. “Now you know exactly what happened in April 1975,” one of our parents texted us. It is not just the Vietnamese community who have noticed this parallel. Media has also made this comparison as well, leading the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to tersely deny these parallels in saying “This is not Saigon.”
Blinken is not wrong in that Kabul is literally not Saigon. The Taliban are not the People’s Army of Vietnam. Afghanistan is literally not Vietnam. The resistance to the analogy is understandable given that Vietnam holds on the U.S. military establishment as a prime example of a quagmire — a forever war with no clear endgame in sight that ends bitterly with the dramatic footage of evacuations which will likely require a few more Top Gun sequels to help sanitize their image.
At the same time, the parallels of Afghanistan to Vietnam are important. First of all, it speaks to the active role Western countries had in using their military power to shape the fate of these countries. While Canada’s military involvement in Afghanistan is undeniable, Canadians might be wondering how Vietnam is relevant for them. Wasn’t Canada just a safe haven for American draft dodgers and conscientious objectors during the Vietnam War? Such a view obscures the active role Canada had in prolonging the conflict in Vietnam.
For one, Canada supplied the U.S. military by manufacturing weapons, explosives and even the infamous Agent Orange gas used to deforest large swaths of Vietnam’s lush forests disabling hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people, many of them children. Furthermore, despite Canada rebuffing U.S. requests to officially deploy troops during the Vietnam War, it is estimated that between 12,000 to 40,000 Canadians volunteered to serve in Vietnam. Of those, between 79 and 160 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial could accurately labelled Canadians — a figure that would end up killing about as many Canadians as its decade-long involvement in Afghanistan which claimed 158 Canadian lives.
Which brings us to the second and most important point: the urgency of addressing the humanitarian crises that has already been unfolding and will continue to unfold. Canada’s complicity in the current conditions in Afghanistan necessitates that the country do more to ensure the safety of Afghan people and accept more refugees. Since the signing of the 1951 Refugee Convention by Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau in 1969 and Canada’s pivotal role in establishing the UN Right to Protect commitment, Canada has signalled to the international community that it upholds a moral and legal obligation towards refugees. Now more than ever, Canada must maintain this responsibility as, like all wars, the harmful after-effects of the “War in Afghanistan” will continue for years. Responsibility does not end because it no longer has a military presence in Afghanistan.
Following the Vietnam War, the victorious People’s Army of Vietnam imprisoned, tortured and executed vast numbers of South Vietnamese people. Many more, like one of our grandfathers, were sent to reeducation camps where many died of exhaustion, illness or famine. People were imprisoned arbitrarily for months, if not years. One of our fathers was jailed and tortured by the People’s Army of Vietnam before he decided to risk his life to leave the place he only knew as home.
In the decades after the fall of Saigon, nearly a million Vietnamese people fled by sea. Tens of thousands drowned during the attempt.
Many, like some of our cousins, were kidnapped by pirates and sold into slavery, never to be heard of again. The fortunate ones ended up at refugee camps in nearby intermediary third countries such as in the Philippines, Indonesia or Malaysia before being accepted by a host country, like Canada. Many of these “boat people,” our parents included, ended up here from 1979 to 1985 — almost a decade after the fall of Saigon.
At the time, Canada, under prime minister Pierre Trudeau, chose to accept 60,000 refugees — 10,000 more refugees than the original target of 50,000 under the previous government.
The lessons from resettling Vietnamese refugees here are instructive. For Canada, the hard work begins now as many Afghans flee the only place they know home in search of somewhere safer. The fallout in Afghanistan is already leading to a rise in civilian deaths, particularly women, and like many refugees and their families, the stories of flight from Afghan people are traumatic and deadly. The UNHCR estimates there have been an additional 240,000 internally displaced people in Afghanistan on top of the 3.5 million people already displaced since the start of the conflict in 2001. In terms of other countries that Afghan refugees find themselves in, Canada’s accommodation of 20,000 refugees is a pittance.
The UNHCR estimates there are 1.4 million Afghan refugees and asylum seekers in Pakistan and another 750,000 in Iran. This likely means that if Canada is serious about accepting 20,000 Afghan refugees, it will also mean working with these intermediary countries
Echoing what local Afghan communities have been saying: Canada can and must do far more than accept 20,000 refugees. This number, when combined with the number of refugees that Canada has accepted over the years from countries it has been involved in (for example, 44,640 refugees from Syria, and likely less from Yemen and Ethiopia given the absence of official announcements), is just a little more than the 60,000 Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laos refugees taken in throughout the 1980s under Pierre Trudeau’s government.
With many Vietnamese people seeing parallels between our own historical situation to the Afghan people, we are heartened by such initiatives showing solidarity to the Afghan people like Viets4Afghans . Locally, there is incredible organizing happening from Afghan-Canadians such as the Canadian Campaign for Afghan Peace. We are also encouraged to see Vietnamese-Canadians seeking to help with groups like Voice Canada in Toronto and the Vietnamese Canadian Centre in Ottawa organizing within their local communities to work out the logistics of privately sponsoring Afghan refugees.
Nonetheless, relying on the good will and individual generosity of private members and volunteers is not enough. Our “best” as it stands is not good enough. Justin Trudeau stands at a moment that recalls a strong historical parallel. We urge that Canada extends the same generosity in meeting its duty to help Afghan refugees, whether they are in Afghanistan or in a potential intermediary country like Pakistan or Iran, like they did with Vietnamese refugees.
As we trudge through the mess of a snap election held during a pandemic and the fumbling of the humanitarian efforts for the Afghan people, Justin Trudeau would be well versed to follow in the footsteps of his father: in the midst of a humanitarian crisis capturing global attention, recognize Canada’s responsibility to uphold the safety and well-being of refugees and accept more Afghan refugees.
In terms of other countries that Afghan refugees find themselves in, Canada’s accommodation of 20,000 refugees is a pittance