>I disagree with Brad however, that the Vietnamese communist
>party *did* have "a truly vicious strain of ethnic hatred" and
>would be interested in any evidence to this effect; particularly
>in any evidence that it was vicious by the standards of Malaysia
>and Indonesia.
Whether it was the party, or some of its minions, or whatever, there's that 'little' glitch with the boat people of a quarter century ago, as well as the apparently forced exodus across the border in the north.
And if those are the standards, then Malaysia, whose government did behave quite abominably towards the boat people,* would be a liberal paradise! Granted the conflicts, discriminations under an affirmative action programme, there have been no pogroms, no violent attacks on Chinese, not since 1969; indeed, despite ongoing conflicts and obstacles, Malaysia is the only country in the Southeast Asia with Chinese schools, Chinese newspapers, Chinese programmes on state-run radio and tv, etc.
Indonesia's a bit different. Formally, it's like Thailand, or the Philippines. Chinese have generally adopted 'indigenous' names, no Chinese papers, programmes, schools, no Chinese language, etc. But unlike Thailand, where assimilation is quite thorough -- although there's been some re-emergence of Chinese identity -- in Indonesia, the distinctions are still drawn, and every now and then, there are attacks on Chinese, a vicious mix of economics and ethnic antagonisms. It's not official policy, but state officials and police are generally acknowledged to have leveraged that when in their interest to do so. Still, 1998 was particularly vicious.
*In 'mitigation', the whole thing was a complex mix. It was also known that the US was encouraging the exodus, but not willing to take in all those fleeing. In Hong Kong, the last of the camps were only recently closed; most of those left forgotten were repatriated. The Malaysian government was obviously self-righteous when Australia started rejecting the wave of boat people from Afghanistan, etc. last year.