Hong Kong’s Vietnamese refugee crisis remembered in the story of freighter Skyluck

When the Panama-registered freighter Skyluck arrived in Hong Kong waters on February 7, 1979, the British colonial government initially refused to allow it to land.

Authorities claimed that the territory could not accommodate the more than 2,600 refugees from Vietnam, and worried about encouraging others to make the risky journey.

The freighter ended up anchored off Lamma Island for months, during which time passengers staged a six-day hunger strike to demand that they be allowed to go ashore.

After more than four months, desperate refugees broke the impasse by cutting Skyluck’s anchor chains so it drifted onto rocks and began to sink on June 29.

The Hong Kong government relented and let the group ashore into already swelling camps.

The Skyluck incident happened at the peak of a more than 20-year refugee crisis in Hong Kong where at least 230,000 refugees from Vietnam sought asylum.