Terrified Chinese workers in race to escape violence
Print Edition
AT least one Chinese worker was killed and more than 140 others were injured when a 1,000-strong mob stormed a steel plant in Vietnam, officials said yesterday, as Beijing accused Hanoi of connivance in the worst anti-China violence in decades.
China yesterday lodged a solemn protest with Vietnam and voiced strong condemnation over the violence.
It was the first deadly incident in a wave of anti-China violence over the deployment of a Chinese oil rig in the Xisha Islands in the South China Sea on May 1. Vietnam has sent ships to confront it and a flotilla of Chinese escort ships.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi expressed the condemnation in an urgent phone call with Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh yesterday evening.
Wang said Vietnam bears unshirkable responsibility for the violent attacks against Chinese companies and nationals.
Wang demanded Vietnam immediately take resolute and effective measures to stop all violence and ensure the safety of the lives and property of all Chinese nationals and companies in Vietnam.
Pham said authorities have apprehended more than 1,000 suspects and would severely punish the lawbreakers.
Yesterday afternoon, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin urgently summoned Vietnamese Ambassador to China Nguyen Van Tho and lodged solemn representation.
Also yesterday, China sent a working group, led by Assistant Foreign Minister Liu Jianchao, to Vietnam to deal with the aftermath of the deadly violence.
Nervous Chinese expatriates were fleeing by land and air. Cambodian immigration police said 600 Chinese crossed into Cambodia over the land border in southern Vietnam on Wednesday, and that others were arriving yesterday.
Taiwan-based China Airlines said it was adding two charter flights from southern Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City.
China accused Hanoi of acting in concert with the protesters.
The violence in Vietnam had a “direct link with the Vietnamese side’s indulgence and connivance in recent days with some domestic anti-China forces and lawbreakers,” China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters in Beijing.
“We urge the Vietnamese government to earnestly assume responsibility, get to the bottom of the incident, punish the perpetrators harshly, and pay compensation,” Hua said.
The deadly riot took place at a steel mill in Ha Tinh province in central Vietnam. It followed anti-China riots by workers at the complex, operated by Taiwan-based Formosa Plastics Group, said Taiwan’s top representative in the country, Huang Chih-peng.
Huang said rioters lit fires and hunted down the Chinese workers, but did not target the management. He said the head of the provincial government and its security chief were at the mill but did not “order tough enough action.”
He said one Chinese citizen was killed and about 90 were injured. Ha Tinh’s deputy police chief Bui Dinh Quang said the situation was “stable” yesterday and that none of the injured, which he put at 141, had life-threatening injuries.
Earlier this week, mobs burned and looted scores of foreign-owned factories in industrial zones.
Hundreds of Chinese working in the zones have fled.
“Yesterday more than 600 Chinese people crossed at Bavet international checkpoint into Cambodia,” Cambodian National Police spokesman Kirt Chantharith said.
At Ho Chi Minh City airport, scores of Chinese nationals arrived in groups, queuing to grab tickets or get on the first flights to Malaysia, Cambodia, Singapore and China.
“People don’t feel safe here, so we just want to get out of Vietnam,” said Xu Wenhong, who bought a one-way ticket to China. “We’re scared. With all the factories burning, anyone would be scared.”
Minister of Planning and Investment Bui Quang Vinh said 400 factories had been damaged since the unrest began.
“The investment image that we have been building over the past 20 years is turning ugly,” he said, according to the state-run Labor newspaper.
Protests have spread to 22 provinces, the government said, calling for “tough measures” to bring the situation under control.
Willy Lin, who heads a Hong Kong trade group, said: “If this madness continues and spreads out in the next couple of days to other parts of Vietnam, definitely it will have a very damaging effect on exporters.”
The unrest is a “disturbing development and has certainly created the impression that in Vietnam (things) were verging out of control,” said Professor Jonathan London at City University of Hong Kong.
Xinhua news agency said eight Chinese remained unaccounted for after rioters attacked four Chinese companies in Ha Tinh province.
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