![\"AFP](\"..\/images\/AFP.gif\")
<\/a> Agence France Presse<\/span><\/p>\n\n
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KUALA LUMPUR, June 30 (AFP) – Malaysia is to demolish a memorial built by former Vietnamese boat people on a northern island where they were interned in the 1970s, reports said Thursday.<\/p>\n
Officials in northern Terengganu state said the construction had never been approved and was to be destroyed on the orders of the Foreign Ministry, acting in response to a complaint from the Vietnamese government.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to take into account the relationship between the Malaysian and Vietnamese governments on the issue,\u201d state secretary Muhatar Abdullah told the official Bernama news agency.<\/p>\n
The monument on Bidong island, which was built in March, speaks of the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people who perished as they fled their homeland.<\/p>\n
Bidong is among several places in Asia that bore the brunt of the exodus of Vietnamese asylum-seekers after the end of the Vietnam War in April 1975 and, later, \u201ceconomic\u201d refugees who followed in the 1980s and 90s.<\/p>\n
Some 245, 133 Vietnamese boat people passed through Bidong between 1978 and 1990, Bernama said.<\/p>\n
The decision to demolish the memorial has triggered angry opposition from the Vietnamese diaspora and appeals to the Malaysian government to reconsider.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Paris-based Vietnam Committee for Human Rights urged Kuala Lumpur not to tear down the memorial.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not a political memorial,\u201d said Vo Van Ai, president of the Committee and a prominent opponent of the communist regime in Hanoi.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is an expression of thanks by former boat people to… all those who gave them refuge in their hour of need.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the climax of the boat people\u2019s exodus in 1979, some 55 people arrived every hour on the Malaysian shores, Ai said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe monument is part of the Vietnamese people\u2019s memory. What happened in our history must be recorded and Vietnam must come to terms with this.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Agence France Presse KUALA LUMPUR, June 30 (AFP) – Malaysia is to demolish a memorial built by former Vietnamese boat people on a northern island where they were interned in the 1970s, reports said Thursday. Officials in northern Terengganu state said the construction had never been approved and was to be destroyed on …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":375,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","","category-press-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/375"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}