A group of former Vietnamese boat people are touring the Malaysian grave sites of fellow refugees who died while attempting to flee Vietnam's communist regime decades ago, reports said today.

About 70 refugees, who have since resettled in Australia and the United States, lit incense sticks and offered prayers at 162 graves in emotional ceremonies in Pasir Puteh town in Kelantan yesterday.

A total of 162 Vietnamese out of 360 on board a boat drowned off the Kelantan coast in 1978 when their vessel capsized in heavy seas.

"We thank Malaysia for their hospitality to us during that time," delegation leader Dong Tran told the Bernama news agency.

"Arriving at Pulau Bedong was a taste of freedom," he said, referring to the main Vietnamese refugee camp in Malaysia.

The first Vietnamese boat people arrived in Malaysia in May 1975 in the beginning of an exodus from Vietnam.

Over a period of 30 years after that, over 250,000 Vietnamese arrived in Malaysia, according to United Nations figures.

Several places in Asia, including Malaysia's eastern shores, bore the brunt of the influx of Vietnamese asylum-seekers after the end of the Vietnam War in April 1975. Successive waves of "boat people" followed in the 1980s and 90s.

800,000 perished

Tran, president of the Vietnamese Boat People Archive Society and now resident in Melbourne, Australia, said some 850,000 Vietnamese refugees were resettled in developed nations from 1975 to 1996.

Another 800,000 perished while attempting to leave Vietnam, he said.

The delegation is due to visit more than 10 refugee grave sites in Malaysia as part of its annual tour, the New Straits Times reported.

Their visit follows the return to Vietnam Sunday of the last Vietnamese refugee to leave Malaysia, Doan Van Viet.

The UN refugee agency has said that it helped resettle some 240,000 Vietnamese refugees from Malaysia to third countries, while some 9,000 others decide to return to Vietnam.