Philippine Coast Guard personnel (L) maneuover their inflexible hull inflatable boat previous their Vietnamese counterparts (R) throughout a joint maritime off Bataan within the disputed South China Sea on August 9, 2024. FILE PHOTO/Agence France-Presse
HANOI — Ten Vietnamese fishers have been violently robbed within the disputed South China Sea, state media reported Wednesday, with an official saying the attackers got here from Chinese language-flagged vessels.
The boys have been reportedly crushed with iron bars and robbed of 1000’s of {dollars} price of fish and tools on Sunday off the Paracel Islands — an archipelago within the resource-rich waterway claimed by China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei.
Vietnamese media didn’t establish the nationalities of the attackers, however Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province advised AFP: “They have been Chinese language, (the boats had) Chinese language flags”.
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4 of the 10-man Vietnamese crew have been rushed to hospital on Monday after arriving at Quang Ngai port, in response to state-run Tien Phong newspaper, which mentioned the lads have been attacked by round 40 folks for 3 hours.
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“Carrying checkered garments, they cruelly beat us with iron bars,” captain Nguyen Thanh Bien was quoted as saying, including that he fell unconscious for round an hour after the assault.
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Footage on Tien Phong’s web site confirmed the fishers being taken from their boat on stretchers. One had a damaged leg and two suffered damaged arms, the report mentioned.
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Captain Bien advised authorities that round $20,000 price of kit and fish had been stolen within the assault.
Social gathering official Vuong — who chairs the folks’s committee of Binh Chau, the commune the place the fishermen dwell — mentioned on Fb he “strongly opposed the barbarous acts by China.”
Neither the ministry of affairs in Vietnam nor China instantly replied to a request for remark from AFP.
In a separate incident on Sunday, Tien Phong newspaper mentioned one other Vietnamese fishing boat within the Paracels was robbed of as much as $12,200 price of kit and fish.
Beijing claims virtually the whole lot of the South China Sea, a waterway of immense strategic significance by means of which trillions of {dollars} of commerce transits yearly.
There are rival claims to elements of the ocean from neighboring nations, together with Vietnam, however China has turn into more and more aggressive in asserting itself within the space.
The incident comes a number of weeks after Chinese language military Lieutenant Normal He Lei mentioned China “will resolutely crush any international hostile encroachment on China’s territorial, sovereign and maritime rights and pursuits”.
He made the assertion on the sidelines of a protection discussion board in Beijing following a sequence of high-profile confrontations with Philippine ships within the waters.
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