Lionel Rosenblatt | |
|---|---|
 Rosenblatt in Cambodia, 1998 | |
| Born | December 10, 1943 |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation(s) | Diplomat, refugee advocate |
Lionel Alexander Rosenblatt (born December 10, 1943) is a former American diplomat, Refugee Coordinator at the United States Embassy in Thailand, and President of Refugees International, an advocacy organization for refugees. Rosenblatt was one of the foremost advocates for resettling Indochinese refugees in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s.
Rosenblatt was the son of David B. and Carol Blumenthal Rosenblatt. His father was a nuclear scientist who worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory. [1] Rosenblatt graduated from Harvard College and attended Stanford Law School for a year before joining the Foreign Service of the Department of State. In the 1960s and early 1970s he was stationed in Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. [2] He married Ann Grosvenor in April 1971. [3]
In early 1975, Rosenblatt was one of a small group of officers at the State Department who pushed for the evacuation of significant numbers of Vietnamese associated with the U.S. war effort in South Vietnam. With the North Vietnamese army advancing to capture Saigon, Rosenblatt and fellow diplomat L. Craig Johnstone were concerned about the slow place of evacuating Vietnamese who had worked for or with the United States in South Vietnam. [4] In April, defying State Department orders, they flew to Saigon and arranged for the evacuation of 200 Vietnamese friends and colleagues. [5]
Returning to Washington, Rosenblatt and Johnstone were called to the office of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who sternly rebuked them for their unauthorized visit to Saigon, then smiled, shook their hands, and offered them their choice of jobs in the Department of State. Rosenblatt chose to continue working with refugees. [6] [7]
From 1976 to 1981, Rosenblatt spent most of his time in Bangkok, Thailand as the Refugee Coordinator of the U.S. Embassy. Working under the leadership of Shepard C. Lowman [8] at the State Department, Rosenblatt presided over a large organization that processed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian refugees for entry into the United States and protected and provided aid to hundreds of thousands more who resided in refugee camps scattered all over Southeast Asia. He retired early from the Foreign Service in 1988. [9]
In 1990, Rosenblatt became President of Refugees International, a Washington-based advocacy organization, and served in that position until 2001. With colleagues such as Yvette Pierpaoli, he traveled to humanitarian crisis areas worldwide, advocating assistance to refugees and durable solutions to humanitarian problems. [10] [11] Pierpaoli was killed on a Refugees International mission in Albania in 1999. [12]
In 1995, Rosenblatt traveled to Chechnya in a fruitless search for the missing humanitarian Fred Cuny. Cuny's body was never found. [13]
In 1975, Rosenblatt received the William R. Rivkin award from the American Foreign Service Association for his work rescuing Vietnamese refugees. [14]
In 1981, Rosenblatt received the Commander of the Most Exalted Order of the White Elephant from the Royal Government of Thailand for his refugee work. [15]
In 1982-1983, Rosenblatt was selected for a sabbatical leave by the Una Chapman Cox Foundation. [16] He devoted his sabbatical to assisting Indochinese refugees.
The 1990 made-for-television movie, "Last Flight Out" had a character named "Larry Rose" based on Rosenblatt. The movie dramatized Rosenblatt's visit to Saigon in April 1975. [17]
In 2009, Rosenblatt received the Julia Taft award for "outstanding contributions to the humanitarian and development community." [18]
In 2010, Rosenblatt was declared an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by Concordia University. The award recognized his work with the indigenous people of Southeastern Asia, especially Hmong refugees in Thailand. [19]
Rosenblatt is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. [20]
French Indochina, officially known as the Indochinese Union and after 1947 as the Indochinese Federation, was a grouping of French colonial territories in Southeast Asia until its demise in 1954. It comprised Cambodia, Laos, the Chinese territory of Guangzhouwan, and the Vietnamese regions of Tonkin in the north, Annam in the centre, and Cochinchina in the south. The capital for most of its history (1902–1945) was Hanoi; Saigon was the capital from 1887 to 1902 and again from 1945 to 1954.
Graham Anderson Martin was an American diplomat. He was the ambassador to Thailand and as U.S. representative to SEATO from 1963 to 1967, ambassador to Italy from 1969 to 1973 and the last United States Ambassador to South Vietnam from 1973 until his evacuation during the Fall of Saigon in 1975.
The Laotian Civil War (1959–1975) was a civil war in Laos waged between the Communist Pathet Lao and the Royal Lao Government from 23 May 1959 to 2 December 1975. It is associated with the Cambodian Civil War and the Vietnam War, with both sides receiving heavy external support in a proxy war between the global Cold War superpowers. It is called the Secret War among the American CIA Special Activities Center, and Hmong and Mien veterans of the conflict.
Refugees International (RI) is an independent humanitarian organization that advocates for better support for displaced people and stateless people. It does not accept any United Nations or government funding. Refugees International's advocacy addresses resource needs and policy changes by government and UN agencies that improve conditions for refugees and displaced people. Some notable board members include Queen Noor and Matt Dillon as well as past members as George Soros, Richard Holbrooke, and Sam Waterston. The organization is based in Washington, D.C. RI also has a blog detailing its recent actions.
Vietnamese Americans are Americans of Vietnamese ancestry. They comprise approximately half of all overseas Vietnamese and are the fourth-largest Asian American ethnic group following Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, and Indian Americans. There are approximately 2.2 million people of Vietnamese descent residing in the U.S.
The Humanitarian Service Medal (HSM) is a military service medal of the United States Armed Forces which was created on January 19, 1977 by President Gerald Ford under Executive Order 11965. The medal may be awarded to members of the United States military who distinguish themselves by meritorious participation in specified military acts or operations of a humanitarian nature.
The Orderly Departure Program(ODP) was a program to permit immigration of Vietnamese to the United States and to other countries. It was created in 1979 under the auspices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The objective of the ODP was to provide a mechanism for Vietnamese to leave their homeland safely and in an orderly manner to be resettled abroad. Prior to the ODP, tens of thousands of "boat people" were fleeing Vietnam monthly by boat and turning up on the shores of neighboring countries. Under the ODP, from 1980 until 1997, 623,509 Vietnamese were resettled abroad of whom 458,367 went to the United States.
The fall of Saigon, also called the liberation of Saigon or liberation of the South by the Vietnamese government, and Black April by anti-communist overseas Vietnamese who fled from South Vietnam following reunification, was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam on 30 April 1975. The event marked the end of the Vietnam War and the collapse of the non-communist South Vietnamese regime as well as the start of a transition period from the formal reunification of Vietnam into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam under communist rule.
Operation Frequent Wind was the final phase in the evacuation of American civilians and "at-risk" Vietnamese from Saigon, South Vietnam, before the takeover of the city by the North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) in the Fall of Saigon. It was carried out on 29–30 April 1975, during the last days of the Vietnam War. More than 7,000 people were evacuated by helicopter from various points in Saigon. The airlift resulted in a number of enduring images.
NghiaSinh International, also known as the International Volunteers for Human Service and Leadership Development, is a humanitarian organization founded in June 1963 in Saigon to provide emergency assistance to the elderly and the poor who arrived in Saigon as refugees from the countryside of Vietnam.
Bidong Island is an island in Kuala Nerus District, Terengganu, Malaysia in the South China Sea. Bidong Island is accessible from the coastal town of Merang in Setiu district. From 1978 until 2005 Bidong Island was a refugee camp with a population reaching at its peak as many as 40,000 Vietnamese refugees. A total of about 250,000 refugees were residents of the camp during the period of its operation. Most stayed on Bidong a few months or longer and were resettled abroad in third countries, especially the United States.
Operation New Life was the care and processing on Guam of Vietnamese refugees evacuated before and after the Fall of Saigon, the closing day of the Vietnam War. More than 111,000 of the evacuated 130,000 Vietnamese refugees were transported to Guam, where they were housed in tent cities for a few weeks while being processed for resettlement. The great majority of the refugees were resettled in the United States. A few thousand were resettled in other countries or chose to return to Vietnam on the vessel Thuong Tin.
The Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act, passed on May 23, 1975, under President Gerald Ford, was a response to the Fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War. Under this act, approximately 130,000 refugees from South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were allowed to enter the United States under a special status, and the act allotted for special relocation aid and financial assistance.
1975 marked the end of the Vietnam War. The North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) launched the Spring Offensive in March; the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) was quickly defeated. The North Vietnamese captured Saigon on April 30, accepting the surrender of South Vietnam. In the final days of the war, the United States, which had supported South Vietnam for many years, carried out an emergency evacuation of its civilian and military personnel and more than 130,000 Vietnamese.
Vietnamese boat people were refugees who fled Vietnam by boat and ship following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. This migration and humanitarian crisis was at its highest in 1978 and 1979, but continued into the early 1990s. The term is also often used generically to refer to the Vietnamese people who left their country in a mass exodus between 1975 and 1995. This article uses the term "boat people" to apply only to those who fled Vietnam by sea.
Yvette Pierpaoli was a French humanitarian who lived in Cambodia and worked in many countries around the world. John le Carré dedicated his novel The Constant Gardener to her.
Jerrold B. Daniels or Jerry Daniels was a CIA Paramilitary Operations Officer (PMOO) in their Special Activities Center who worked in Laos and Thailand from the early 1960s to the early 1980s. He was known by his self-chosen CIA call-sign of "Hog." In the early 1960s, he was recruited by the CIA as a liaison officer between Hmong General Vang Pao and the CIA. He worked with the Hmong people for the CIA's operation in Laos commonly called the "Secret War" as it was little known at the time. In 1975, as the communist Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese Army advanced on the Hmong base at Long Tieng, Daniels organized the air evacuation of Vang Pao and more than two thousand of his officers, soldiers, and their families to Thailand. Immediately after the departure of Daniels and Vang Pao, thousands more Hmong fled across the Mekong river to Thailand, where they lived in refugee camps. From 1975 to 1982 Daniels worked among Hmong refugees in Thailand facilitating the resettlement of more than 50,000 of them in the United States and other countries.
The Indochina refugee crisis was the large outflow of people from the former French colonies of Indochina, comprising the countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, after communist governments were established in 1975. Over the next 25 years and out of a total Indochinese population in 1975 of 56 million, more than 3 million people would undertake the dangerous journey to become refugees in other countries of Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, or China. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 250,000 Vietnamese refugees had perished at sea by July 1986. More than 2.5 million Indochinese were resettled, mostly in North America, Australia, and Europe. More than 525,000 were repatriated, either voluntarily or involuntarily, mainly from Cambodia.
The Cambodian humanitarian crisis from 1969 to 1993 consisted of a series of related events which resulted in the death, displacement, or resettlement abroad of millions of Cambodians.
The Vietnam Humanitarian Assistance and Evacuation Act of 1975 was U.S. congressional legislation that proposed to designate financial resources for the evacuation and humanitarian aid of South Vietnam preceding the Fall of Saigon. The Act was not passed, however, it began the debate in Congress over how best to evacuate Vietnam and the extent of the President's power to use military troops in order to safely evacuate refugees. These conversations led to the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act which was introduced shortly after H.R. 6096 failed to pass.