South Vietnam

Yvonne Preston wrote in an Australian newspaper earlier this year:

"Organisations like World Vision have particular problems, being less apolitical than other agencies despite their pro-testations, and known for their fundamental Christian fervent anti-Communist stand.

World Vision is the only agency in Vietnam that worries on behalf of its sponsored children and their families about the reaction of the Vietcong to letters from the West that might be discovered in their possession.

'We would be hoping for a miracle to be able to carry on, but because we've been using US aid money and had American personnel in our programmes, that does cause Us some concern. We're afraid for our sponsored children."

This is not an isolated instance of concern. World Vision's Visiongram of 11 April, 1975 (signed in New Zealand by Mr Renner) said:

"We who are working in South Vietnam are numbed and shocked as during the last few weeks we have seen the Republic of Vietnam literally fall around us. This is the latest word from one of our Australian staff in Vietnam, Sister Joan Potter, medical supervisor of the New Life Baby Home in Saigon.

She reports World Vision is engaged in its most massive relief efforts ever! Hundreds of thousands of refugees are walking long distances to freedom, the old and frail, the disabled and children are walking for three days, often without water. Many are dying on the road."

Joan further says, "in hospitals, patients have been left behind with no-one to care for them or to provide food. They slowly await death." She also reports stories of unbelievable torture.

The Challenge Weekly (April 5, 1975) carried a further report written by Sister Potter. She made the following points:

World Vision nutrition centres... are now behind enemy lines.... stories of unbelievable torture of people unable to escape are reaching us in Saigon, told to us by people who were fortunate enough to reach safety. People are not being shot but various means of torture are being used so that the unfortunate victims will have slow and painful deaths.

........topics for prayer: Vietnamese Christians now behind enemy lines with no hope for escape."

The emphasis is ours.

Mr Russell Marshall MP, criticised World Vision earlier this year for its involvement with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Although the situation has since changed dramatically, the link between the two organisations page 9 must be examined by this investigation.

Seventy-five per cent of World Visions operation in Cambodia was funded by USAID. In South Vietnam the figure was not so high. Most (but not all) agencies operating in South Vietnam. Cambodia and Laos received some assistance from USAID.

Since foreign (especially American) involvement was a fundamental cause of the war, acceptance of these funds tends to indicate a political view held by the agencies that condones this intervention.

Some World Vision Aid programmes have made this stance very clear. The Indochina Chronicle (Oct/Nov, 1975) reports that yellow bowls of noodles were distributed to children bearing this inscription in Vietnamese: "World Vision Relief Organisation - US Food for Peace Programme - Jesus said I am the Way the Light and the Truth." (An inscription that also clearly links Christianity and the American Government)

Although many will regard this link with USAID as a sign of politcal bias, others will be unconcerned as long as acceptance of this finance does not place World Vision under any external control. From our dicussions with World Vision administrators, it is clear that the Organisation itself holds the latter attitude.