a212  1100  02 Aug 78
AM-Focus-Mission Unpopular, Bjt,700
Today's Focus: Help for the Boat People
Laserphoto NY33
By PETER ARNETT
AP Special Correspondent
    Somewhere in the South China Sea, a converted Navy landing ship
waits to do the job no government wants.
    A fishing boat arrives crowded with Vietnamese fleeing their
homeland. Now the crew aboard the old Navy vessel goes to work. A sick
child is treated. Food is given.
    The tiny fishing boat then sails on, becoming just a speck on the
western horizon bound for any place that will let its passengers land.
And on the mercy ship they debate whether the little craft and its
human cargo will make it.
    ''Officially, we couldn't tell them what direction to take, or even
point them the right way,'' explains W. Stanley Mooneyham, president
of World Vision International, the humanitarian organization that
chartered the landing ship to use as a floating aid center for
Vietnamese boat people fleeing across the South China Sea.
    ''The neighboring countries barely tolerate our activities because
they are unhappy about accepting the refugees. There seems to be a
conspiracy against the boat people. It is ludicrous that human life is
held so cheaply,'' Mooneyham said in an interview after returning
from Southeast Asia.
    Since the World Vision ship began its $50,000-a-month mercy mission
in early July, President Carter has ordered American flag carriers to
pick up Vietnamese refugees found in distress at sea. Ship owners are
being assured that the United States will take the responsibility for
their resettlement. No refugees are known to have been picked up yet.
    Mooneyham said this was one step toward ''changing the inhumanity
that since 1975 has encouraged international shipping to pass by
Vietnamese refugees without helping them, actions unique in the
history of Western civilization.''
    Much more is needed, he asserted, ''because we know large numbers of
refugees are drowing at sea.'' Accurate figures on human losses are
not available because the boat people set out in secrecy.
    But eyewitness reports from surviving boat people suggest that up to
50 percent drown. Some of the 1,800 refugees who arrived in Malaysia
one recent week reported that 200 of their number drowned en route.
    Since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 a total of 40,000 boat
refugees have landed in Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia
and Australia, most of them in the past 12 months. There are 21,000
waiting in camps for resettlement, and the flow continues unabated.
    Mooneyham said that when he broached his idea for a mercy ship in
January and February ''all five governments in the area, the United
States and the United Nations officially discouraged me. One official
said, 'God, don't give them enough gas to get to Australia.' ''
    Mooneyham said, ''I got the feeling that the more we saved, the
bigger the problem for the world. But I knew the boat people were not
vicious people. They just wanted to live in freedom.''
    World Vision, a Christian charity that gets its money from
donations, located an old World War II Navy landing ship that had been
used to haul supplies between Singapore, Saigon and Hong Kong.
    The organization leased it and added portable living units to
provide a first-aid clinic and living quarters for two Chinese nurses,
an Indian doctor, an American captain - Burt Singleton, from Palos
Verdes, Calif. -  and a crew of nine.
    A mechanic and an interpreter rounded out the ship's complement, and
it has begun roaming the South China Sea about 100 miles off Vietnam,
traveling a course known to be favored by the boat people.
    ''We have family food packs aboard with 10 days supply, charcoal
braziers, and gasoline,'' Mooneyham said. ''When the boats leave
Vietnam they are as lightly supplied as possible because of the risk
of detection.
    ''We give the sick first aid, and we provide a compass for ships
that need it.''
    Officials were concerned about the mercy mission because most Asian
points barred vessels arriving with Vietnamese refugees. ''We will
pick up people if we have to,'' said Mooneyham, but so far they have
gotten by with aid and assistance to the boats they encountered at
sea.
    Mooneyham said, ''What we need to doe and specific responsibility to
these debris of the war, but so does mankind. To abandon these boat
people now is an unconscionable act.''
    
ap-ny-08-02 1402EST
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