Three decades on, Talbot Bashall retains many horrific memories of his 31/2years spent among the thousands of boatpeople who poured into Hong Kong from communist Vietnam.
But one case stands out for sheer 'awfulness', says the former controller of the Refugee Control Centre, the body created in early 1979 to handle the developing crisis.
The tale involves a boat that arrived in 1981 with a handful of refugees, including a youth - aged about 15 - who was tied to the mast.
'Interrogation of the boy revealed that he had been due to be eaten,' recalls Bashall, now 84 and living in Perth, Australia.
'His life was spared, he said, only because their boat arrived in Hong Kong territory.'
The youth, Dao Can Cu, told the authorities how, a few days earlier, the others pulled his shirt over his head and tied his legs before the captain's nephew struck him on the head with an iron bar.
As he lay bleeding, he heard talk of his throat being cut.
