“The refugee problem is a presage of the great migrations of the twenty first century.”

Original title: “Nanmin mondai
ha 21 seku minzoku daiidô no zenchô da”. Interview
with H Uno; translated by R Nakamura, Shûkan posuto, 17 August 1979, pp. 34-35.

 

Dits et écrits III 798 (271) pp 798-800, translated by Ryóji Nakamura. Translated from the French by Colin Gordon, 2015.

35 Vietnamese refugees wait to be taken aboard the amphibious command ship USS BLUE RIDGE (LCC-19). Wikicommons/ PH2 Phil Eggman. Some rights reserved.

Shûkan posuto: What, in your view, is the origin of the Vietnamese refugee
problem?

Michel Foucault: Vietnam has been continuously occupied for a century by military
powers including France, Japan and the USA. And today the former South Vietnam
is occupied by the former North Vietnam. To be sure, this occupation of the
South by the North differs from those which preceded it, but one should not
forget that the power in place in South Vietnam is that of the North. During
this century of occupations, deep hostilities have been created within the
population. Many people collaborated with the occupying power, including
merchants who did business with colonists, and regional officials who worked
under the occupation. Because of these historic antagonisms, part of the
population now finds itself accused and rejected.

Many people
are feeling this contradiction: previously one needed to support the
unification of Vietnam, now we face the problem of refugees, which is its
consequence.

MF: A state should
not exercise an unconditional right of life and death, either over its own
people or over those of another country. Refusing the state this right of life
and death was a reason to oppose the bombing of Vietnam by the USA, in our
present time it is a reason for helping the refugees.

It seems that the Cambodian
refugee problem is different from the Vietnamese one. What do you think about
this?

MF: What happened in
Cambodia is unprecedented in modern history: the government massacred its own
people on a scale never previously perpetrated. And the rest of the population
which survived has indeed been saved, but finds itself under the domination of
an army exercising violent and destructive power. So the situation there is
different from in Vietnam.

It is noticeable
however that, in the movements of solidarity which are being organised across the
world to support the South East Asian refugees, people are not taking account
of the difference in the historical and political situations. One should not
remain indifferent to historical and political analyses of the refugee
problems, but what needs doing urgently is to save the people who are in
danger.

Because at the
moment forty thousand Vietnamese people are adrift in the South China Sea, or
else washed up on islands where they are on the verge of death. Forty thousand
Cambodians have been excluded from Thailand, and they are in danger of dying.
At least eighty thousand people are close to death, day by day. No discussion
about the global distribution of responsibilities, no argument about the
political and economic difficulties of refugee aid can justify states in
abandoning these human beings who are at death’s door.

In 1938 and
1939, Jews fled from Germany and central Europe, but because no one would
accept them, some of them died. Forty years later, are we again going to send
100,000 people to their death?

For a global
solution to the refugee problem, the states which create refugees, notably
Vietnam, will have to change their policy. But how do you think we can achieve
this global solution?

MF: In the case of
Cambodia the situation is much graver than in Vietnam, but there is hope of a
solution in the near future. One can imagine that the formation of a government
acceptable to the Cambodian people will open the way to a solution. But in
Vietnam the problem is much more complex. The political power there is already
established: but this power rejects a part of the population, and in any case
the people excluded don’t want to stay. The state has created a situation where
people are obliged to take the chance of survival through exodus by sea, rather
than stay in Vietnam. So it is clear that pressure must be put on Vietnam to change
this situation. But what does “putting pressure” mean?

In Geneva at the
UN conference on refugees, the member states put pressure on Vietnam,
in the form of recommendations and advice. The government of Vietnam then made
a few concessions. Rather than abandoning the people who want to leave in
uncertain conditions and risking their lives, the Vietnam government is
proposing to construct transit centres for the people who want to leave: they
will stay there for weeks, months or years, until they find a country that
accepts them… But this plan sounds strangely like a system of concentration
camps.

The refugee
problem has arisen several times in the past, but do you see a novel historical
aspect in the Vietnamese situation?

MF: In the twentieth century
there have frequently been genocides and ethnic persecutions. I think that in
the near future these problems and phenomena will recur in new forms. Because
firstly, in recent years the number of dictatorships has risen rather than
fallen. Since political expression is impossible in their own country and they
lack the strength to resist, people who are being repressed by dictatorships
will choose to escape from their hell.

Secondly, post-colonial States have been
created within arbitrary borders dating from the colonial period, with the
result that ethnic, linguistic and religious groups are mixed together. This
leads to serious tensions. In these countries, hostilities within populations
are liable to explode and lead to massive population displacements and collapse
of the state apparatus.

Thirdly, the
developed economic powers which needed labour from the Third world and other
developing countries have recruited migrants from Portugal, Algeria or Africa.
But now these same countries, which no longer need to import labour because of
technological progress, are trying to send these migrants back.

All these problems lead to migrations
involving hundreds of thousands, or millions of people. And migrations
inevitably tend to become painful and tragic, accompanied by deaths and
murders. I am afraid that what is happening in Vietnam is not just a sequel of
the past, but a presage of the future.

Translated from the French by Colin Gordon,
October 2015.