Multiple
reports of casualties as Vietnamese anger over China's expansionism in disputed
seas spills over in attacks on foreign-owned factories
theguardian.com,
Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing, Kate Hodal, south-east Asia correspondent, and
agencies, Thursday 15 May 2014
 |
| Vietnamese protest against China near Formosa mill in Ha Tinh, Vietnam. A doctor told Reuters that more than 20 people died during the rioting on Wednesday night. Photograph: Str/EPA |
Violent
reaction in Vietnam to China's expansionist stance in disputed seas has turned
deadly, with multiple reports of people being killed during rioting that began
with attacks on foreign-owned factories.
Cambodia
said hundreds of Chinese nationals had poured across the border from Vietnam to
escape the riots.
"Yesterday
more than 600 Chinese people from Vietnam crossed at Bavet international
checkpoint into Cambodia," Kirt Chantharith, a police spokesman, told
Reuters on Thursday. Bavet is on a highway stretching from Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam's commercial centre, to Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.
On Thursday
the death toll was unclear, although some news agencies reported at least 20
people had been killed.
A top
Taiwanese diplomat said rioters had stormed a large Taiwanese steel mill in
Vietnam, killing at least one Chinese worker and injuring 90 more. Huang
Chih-peng said the violence took place late on Wednesday and early on Thursday
at the Formosa steel mill in central Vietnam.
According
to the Wall Street Journal, a Chinese contractor and a Vietnamese worker died
in the violence. China's state-run People's Daily tweeted that 10 Chinese
nationals went missing when protesters ransacked a Chinese factory.
A doctor at
a hospital in the central Vietnamese province of Ha Tinh told Reuters five
Vietnamese workers and 16 other people described as Chinese died during
anti-China rioting on Wednesday night.
"There
were about 100 people sent to the hospital last night. Many were Chinese. More
are being sent to the hospital this morning," the doctor said.
Earlier
this week mobs burned and looted scores of foreign-owned factories in southern
Vietnam, believing they were Chinese-run when many were actually Taiwanese or
South Korean. No deaths were reported in those initial attacks.
On
Thursday, China's embassy in Vietnam urged the country's public security
authorities to take "effective measures" to protect its nationals'
personal safety and legal rights. The embassy made the remark in a statement
published on its website, adding that China had launched an emergency mechanism
to cope with the effects of anti-Chinese riots in its southern neighbour.
Anti-Chinese
sentiment has been running high in Vietnam ever since Beijing deployed an oil
rig into disputed waters in the South China Sea on 1 May. There have been
encounters including ramming and exchanges of water cannon between Chinese
vessels operating near the rig and boats from Vietnam, which wants China out of
the area.
According
to the English-language version of the Tuoi Tre newspaper, some 600 people have
been arrested in Vietnam's southern provinces, where riots erupted on Tuesday
amid reports of looting and attacks on police officers.
The
government has since issued stark warnings to the Chinese that continued
so-called aggression which had to date been met with diplomacy would likely
turn ugly if it persisted.
With
reports on Wednesday from the Vietnam coastguard that the Chinese had also sent
two amphibious ships equipped with anti-air missiles to protect their oil rig,
commander Major General Nguyen Quang Dam said it would "make no concession
to China's wrongful acts" and stressed: "Their violent acts have
posed serious threats to the lives of Vietnamese members of law
enforcement."
An op-ed
piece in the English-language daily Vietnam News was just as transparent with
its words: "The Vietnamese people are angry. The nation is angry. We are telling
the world that we are angry. We have every right to be angry."
"China
should stop violating international law and respect Vietnam's
sovereignty," it continued, adding that China's seeming aggression
"smacks of a bull doing something wrong just because it can".
"Over
thousands of years, we have shown that we never cease fighting
aggressors," the op-ed added. "We are proud of our freedom-fighting
forefathers and resistance is in our blood. We are a small country, but we are
not weak. We will stand as one, united in the cause of protecting our
motherland's integrity."
China's
foreign minister, Wang Yi, "urged Vietnam not to attempt to further
complicate and aggravate the current maritime friction", the state-run
Global Times newspaper reported on Thursday.
"China's
position on safeguarding its legitimate sovereign rights and interests is firm
and clear and will not change," he told Indonesia's foreign affairs
minister Marty Natalegawa in a phone conversation, the Global Times said.
The
newspaper condemned the protests in an editorial, calling them "the most
stunning attack [on] foreign businesses in East Asia in recent years".
"The
turmoil is the outcome of Hanoi's years of anti-China propaganda," it
said. "Without legitimate grounds and practical capability, Vietnam
fabricates and hypes up its jurisdiction over the Xisha and Nansha islands [AKA
the Paracel and Spratly islands]. This uncompromising stance, in an attempt to
bring its people together, has actually cornered itself."
China's
tourism administration has posted a note to its website urging Vietnam-bound
tourists to "carefully consider" their plans.
Taiwan's
ministry of foreign affairs plans to print thousands of stickers saying "I
am from Taiwan" in Vietnamese and English and distribute them to local
Taiwanese business owners, to help them avoid the wrath of anti-China mobs. A
ministry spokesperson confirmed the plan, but added that the stickers have not
yet been distributed.
In 2012
Chinese authorities permitted large-scale anti-Japan protests amid rising
tensions between the two countries over competing territorial claims in the
East China Sea. Protesters in cities across the country vandalised Japanese
shops and smashed Japanese-made cars before authorities ordered them to
disperse.
China's
propaganda authorities are censoring coverage of the protests, according to a
leaked circular obtained by the online magazine China Digital Times.
"Absolutely do not report on any news related to 'Chinese-funded
enterprises in Vietnam being attacked by Vietnamese,'" it said. "Do
not republish foreign coverage."
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