Camp Vietnam is one of the most famous tourist attractions in Galang. There, thousands of refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia had lived for 17 years. Many impressions and memories are left in these historical sites.
Camp Vietnam's most easy to find. Although located in the tourist areas Galang Island, the area is famous as far as Canada and the United States. On Internet sites, information about these historical sites scattered lots.
To get there, is also quite easy. Camp Vietnam can be gone for about 30 minutes drive from the city center of Batam. Turn left at the intersection TEMBESI, we will pass the five bridges that connect Batam with area Rempang and Galang. After crossing the bridge into the fifth, on the left side of the road, posted writings that tourism area.
There are checkpoints which will require motorists to pay an entrance fee. For cars and the like, free of charges Rp10 thousand. Once past the checkpoint, smoothly paved roads everywhere accompany the visitor enters.
In this area, visitors can see some monuments and the remnants of the refugee camp. There are monuments boats, human statues, a former refugee barracks, churches and temples, youth building, cemetery and others.
Place that can provide a clear picture to the visitors about the daily life of the refugees, one of whom is a museum, which used the former school. Entering the building, visitors can see a thousand faces photos refugees who had lived on the island. Thousands of pictures were plastered on the wall, complete with their names.
Other photos of the activities of the refugees were also plastered. Like the image of Vietnamese refugees worship, playing football or taking a break on the beach. Despite the evacuation, they were given the opportunity to enjoy a vacation landscape around. The refugees are also many who marry and have children while staying in Galang.
Photo of the Vietnamese youths playing football in front of the barracks are still intact. Photos that illustrate a number of Vietnamese refugee youths playing football in one afternoon. Wearing shorts with no shirts, their chest was left open. On either side, stood the houses a stage which is home to the refugees.
Now, after almost 13 years later, the refugee barracks was not a trace. Stage houses a museum looking at photographs of exotic, just a stone leaving the dirty buffer full bush. Some refugee resettlement site, now a plantation.
UNHCR's office in front of the monastery also been damaged. From the zinc roof and rusty with holes. Doors and windows were gone. Plywood that covered the walls of the building also rotted. Only a closet to sit in the bathroom that looks still good.
It all started in the Vietnam civil war between South and North Vietnam which caused suffering for people in the 1970s. Takeover of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam by North Vietnam in 1975 triggered the recurrence of war again.
Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese left the country using a boat. In one boat could be occupied by tens to hundreds of people. They are stacked, crammed into a boat. Later these refugees called boat people.
For months the refugees drifting in the middle of the South China Sea waters, without a clear purpose. Some of them have died at sea and some can reach the land, including parts of Indonesia, such as Galang Island, Tanjung Pinang, Natuna, Gulf Clubs, Stone Black, Cape Unggat, Walang River and other areas.
A wave of refugees was the High Commission's attention the UN Refugees (UNHCR) and the Government of Indonesia. Galang Island, finally agreed as a temporary shelter for refugees. UNHCR and the Government of Indonesia to build various facilities, such as refugee barracks, places of worship, hospitals, and schools, which are used to facilitate approximately 250 thousand refugees.
In this place, the lives of Vietnamese refugees continued throughout the year 1979-1996, until finally they get asylum in developed countries would accept them or repatriated to Vietnam. These refugees are concentrated in a residential area of 80 hectares and close interaction with local residents.
Camp Vietnam, formerly really like a village with full facilities. Electricity almost 24 hours of light. Likewise with clean water, flow continues because of the water tank and installation of water management in the hills. In fact, the pipes that water is still installed even though its inhabitants have been left merciful-dozen years.
In 1996, around 5600 the last Vietnamese refugees left Galang. They were taken using the Bridge V tagboat Tema Melur beach. Around 5000 the Vietnamese refugees who do not pass the new citizenship test, had also refused repatriation. They protest and demonstrations had in front of the UNHCR in the refugee camp. As a form of protest, their boat sink or burn it.
Photographs of the sinking or burning boat we can see in the museum. The Batam Authority, the boat was lifted into the land, fixed, and exhibited to the public as a historic object, which reminds visitors of the suffering of these refugees.
A number of refugees handicrafts are also stored in the museum. Like the statue, and various handicrafts made by the refugees themselves.
Statue Park or the Statue of Humanity Humanity is standing at the entrance also has a story. The statue portrays a woman named Tinhn Han Loai were raped by fellow refugees. Shame bear the burden of being raped, she finally decided to commit suicide. To commemorate the tragic events that refugees make the statue.
The boat is also a monument consisting of three boats used by the refugees when they left Vietnam. With their boat like that for months across the South China Sea, until finally arriving at Galang Island and surroundings.
In addition, various places of worship that had been built to facilitate the refugees, also still exists today. Like, Quan Am Tu monastery, the Catholic Church Nha Tho Duc Me Vo Nhiem, Protestant church
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