Translated by Vu Quoc Ngu
May 28, 2014
Viet Tan, a U.S.-based opposition party banned in Vietnam, has rejected the communist government’s accusation which says the party played a major role in the anti-China riots in the Vietnamese southern provinces in mid May, the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) reported.
In a statement sent to BBC on May 27, Spokesman of Viet Tan, or Vietnam Reform Party, Hoang Tu Duy said the party is against any violence and anyone conducting violence is not the party’s member.
The response was made after Vietnam’s state media, including the Phap Luat Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh newspaper, on May 27 reported that Vietnam’s security forces arrested three members of Viet Tan who admitted to managing and providing financial resources for anti-China demonstrations in Dong Nai and Binh Duong provinces on May 12-13.
Viet Tan’s policy is to support non-violent efforts to fight for democracy, human rights and Vietnam’s sovereignty, said Mr. Duy in the statement, adding that the party disagreed with the riots in the two southern provinces.
The anti-China protests started on May 12 and turned violent a day later when many people attacked foreign-invested factories in industrial zones in Binh Duong and Dong Nai. Around 600 factories, mostly Chinese ones, were destroyed and numerous Chinese were beaten. Some factories invested by Taiwanese and South Korean businesses were wrongly attacked.
The demonstrations, with the participation of about 20,000 workers in factories in the two provinces, were triggered by the Chinese deployment of $1 billion oilrig in Vietnam’s waters in the East Sea.
Another statement of Viet Tan posted on social network Facebook said that the accusation made by Vietnam’s security forces aims to divert the domestic public from the government’s inability to deal with China’s aggressiveness, to hide the real thugs in the protests who worked under the police’s covering, and to justify their suppressing of political dissidents and bloggers.
According to Vietnam’s state media, the peaceful anti-China protests turned violent as many workers who were treated badly by employers, and criminals started to damage properties and steal goods of foreign-invested factories.
The incidents were intervened by “hostile forces” outside of the country, state-controlled newspapers said, citing the local police.
Some local observers suggested that the riots were designed by Chinese agents who want to destabilize Vietnam. They also questioned the slow and inadequate response of the local police forces to deal with mobs.
The police in Binh Duong and Dong Nai arrested over thousands of individuals taking part in the riots. Over 500 of them were prosecuted and face imprisonment for conducting public disorders, destroying and stealing foreign properties and resisting against on-duty state officials.
Vietnam labels Viet Tan as terrorist organization. During the past few years, Hanoi has arrested and imprisoned a number of the party’s members.
Source: BBC
