Whitehead Detainment Camp

          

This is a photograph taken by Sebastião Salgado in 1995 of the Whitehead Detention Camp in Hong Kong. Whitehead, in 1995, contained about 11,000 of the Vietnamese 'boat people', who sought to escape communism by finding a new life in China (Salgado). However, because many of those who fled communism were not technically refugees but were looking for employment, they were not accepted in Hong Kong. Before it was closed in 1998, all the “non-essential welfare services in the camp” were scaled back to persuade the Vietnamese and other immigrants to return to their own countries (“Global”). Essentially, this meant that the mentally ill, the physically disabled, the unaccompanied children, and the severely depressed that the CFSI (Community Family Services International) were afforded little to no care. However, few in the camps seemed willing or even desirous to make the journey back to their former homes. Although Whitehead was closed in 1998, there are more than twelve camps in Hong Kong that are still functioning ("Global"). 

          These children, who are generally the descendants of 'boat people', often have never seen "a dog, a cow, a horse, or a garden." Many were born and raised in these camps, surrounded by barbed wire and concrete, attending school behind bars (Salgado). In this picture, the kids look like kids. Remember when you were a kid and you pretended that every fence could make a jail? If you didn't know better, these kids could almost be sitting behind a fence, telling their mothers to look, look, look at them because they knew how to play prisoner. Some of them laugh, some of them cry, but they’re just kids. Forty percent of the population in Whitehead was made up of children (Salgado).

            We can’t do anything for the children who grew up in Whitehead, but we can do something for those who have been detained in current camps. The more people know, the more they can do; if nothing else, I want to make sure the public knows about the suffering of these children.

"Global Detention Project: Hong Kong Profile." Global Detention Project: Hong Kong Profile. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2013.

The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2013.

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations. New York: Aperture. 25. Print.