Beijing expresses serious concern after ‘more than 20’ die in Vietnam anti-China riots
Beijing voices concern after a doctor in Vietnam said on Thursday at least 16 Chinese nationals and five Vietnamese had been killed in a riot at a Taiwanese-owned steel mill in the centre of the country
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 15 May, 2014, 11:25am
UPDATED : Thursday, 15 May, 2014, 5:06pm
Reuters in Hanoi
Workers hold banners reading 'Paracel Islands and Spratly Islands belong to Vietnam', near Formosa factory, in Ha Tinh, Vietnam on Thursday. Photo: EPA
The Foreign Ministry in Beijing has expressed serious concern over violence against Chinese nationals in Vietnam and it urged the authorities in Hanoi to punish lawbreakers and compensate victims. Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying made the comments at a regular media briefing on Thursday.
More than 20 people were killed and rioters attacked Vietnam’s biggest steel plant overnight as violent anti-China protests spread to the centre of the country a day after arson and looting in the south, a doctor and newspapers said on Thursday.
The doctor at a hospital in central Ha Tinh province, 250 kilometres south of Hanoi, told Reuters five Vietnamese workers and 16 other people described as Chinese were killed in the rioting, one of the worst breakdowns in Sino-Vietnamese relations since the neighbours fought a brief border war in 1979.
“There were about a hundred people sent to the hospital last night. Many were Chinese. More are being sent to the hospital this morning,” the doctor at Ha Tinh General Hospital told reporters by phone.
Hundreds of Chinese have fled to Cambodia to escape the riots, Cambodian police said on Thursday.
“Yesterday more than 600 Chinese people from Vietnam crossed at Bavet international checkpoint into Cambodia,” National Police spokesman Kirt Chantharith told reporters.
“They are at guest houses and hotels in Phnom Penh, with around 100 people staying in Bavet town,” he added. “After the situation calms down, they may go back to Vietnam or to other places.”
Bavet is on a highway stretching from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s commercial centre, to Cambodia’s capital.
Workers hold banners, which read, "Please protest in the right way" (top), and "We are looking at soldiers on islands, and the Paracels and the Spratlys belong to Vietnam", during a protest in Binh Duong province. Photo: Reuters
China’s tourism administration said in a notice on its website on Wednesday that any Chinese planning to visit Vietnam should “carefully consider” their plans, and called for visitors to “raise their consciousness of danger”.
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.
The Hong Kong government issued a travel warning for Vietnam on Wednesday and the Immigration Department said it had received three requests for help from Hongkongers in Vietnam.
Taiwanese media said around 1,000 rioters attacked a huge steel plant in Ha Tinh province owned by Formosa Plastics Group, Taiwan’s biggest investor in Vietnam. When completed in 2020, it would be Southeast Asia’s largest steel plant and would include a seaport and a power plant. Local media in Vietnam said the complex could cost about US$20 billion.
Firefighters stand across from the main entrance of Tan Than Industries as the Taiwanese bicycle factory burns, in Di An Town, Binh Duong province, Vietnam on Wednesday. Photo: AP
Taiwan’s ambassador to Vietnam, Huang Chih-Peng, who reportedly spoke to a member of the management team at the mill on Thursday morning, put the death toll much lower, saying rioters lit fires at several buildings and hunted down the Chinese workers. He said that the head of the provincial government and its security chief were at the mill during the riot but didn’t “order tough enough action”.
Huang said the rioters left the complex at 6am, but he feared they “might be going for a rest and could come back.”
The anti-China riots erupted in industrial zones in the south of the country on Tuesday after protests against Beijing placing an oil rig in a part of the South China Sea claimed by Hanoi.
The brunt of the violence has been borne by Taiwanese firms, mistaken by the rioters to be owned by mainland Chinese.
Thousands of Vietnamese set fire to foreign factories and rampaged through industrial zones in Binh Duong and Dong Nai provinces on Tuesday, officials said. There were no confirmed reports of any violence later in that area.
In Binh Duong alone, police said 460 companies in the province had reported some damage to their plants, local media reported.
A guard points at a broken window inside a factory building in Binh Duong province following anti-China riots. Photo: EPA
“More than 40 policemen were injured while on duty, mainly by bricks and stones thrown by extremists,” the state-run Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper said.
About 600 people were arrested for looting and inciting the crowd, the newspaper quoted Vo Thanh Duc, the police chief of Binh Duong province, as saying.
The United States has called on both sides for restraint.
Such disputes “need to be resolved through dialogue, not through intimidation,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told a regular briefing. “We again urge dialogue in their resolution.”
The US State Department said it was monitoring events in Vietnam closely, and urged restraint from all parties, while adding: “We support the right of individuals to assemble peacefully to protest.”
The current crisis erupted within days of a week-long visit to Asia by President Barack Obama in late April in which he pledged that Washington would live up to its obligation to defend its allies in the region.
China’s state-run Global Times newspaper said in an editorial on Thursday that the riots were “the outcome of Hanoi’s years of anti-China propaganda”.
“China’s over-tolerance must not test China’s patience beyond the limit,” the paper said, adding that Vietnam should compensate foreign investors.
With additional reporting from AFP
