Road to WW3 -- Riots in Vietnam: China, Russia have Geopolitical Ambitions, US like Adolescents talking Int'l Law

Riots in Vietnam: China, Russia have Geopolitical Ambitions, US like Adolescents talking Int'l Law






 Fox News 'Special Report' 5/15/2014 All Star Panel weigh in over Vietnam protest against China Oil rig: Is US sending the wrong message to China?
Judge Napolitano: Someone's got to trade something behind the scene.
Krauthammer: China - Russia has Geopolitical Ambitions, US talking like High school Adolescents about International law and dialog.

At least 21 dead in Vietnam anti-China protests over oil rig
Riots spread from south the central part of Vietnam as crowds set fire to industrial parks, sparked by rig in disputed territory.
(Guardian) At least 21 people were killed and nearly 100 injured in Vietnam on Thursday during violent protests against China in one of the deadliest confrontations between the two neighbours since 1979.
Crowds set fire to industrial parks and factories, hunted down Chinese workers and attacked police during the riots, which have spread from the south to the central part of the country following the start of the protests on Tuesday.
The violence has been sparked by the dispute concerning China stationing an oil rig in an area of the South China Sea claimed by Vietnam. The two nations have been fighting out a maritime battle over sovereignty and that battle has now seemingly come ashore.

Early Thursday morning a 1,000-strong mob stormed a giant Taiwanese steel mill in Ha Tinh province, central Vietnam, where they set buildings ablaze and chased out Chinese employees, according to a Taiwanese diplomat, Huang Chih-peng. He said both the head of the provincial government, and his security chief, were at the mill at the time of the riots, but did not "order tough-enough action".

Five Vietnamese workers, and 16 others described as Chinese, were killed during the rioting, a doctor at a hospital in Ha Tinh told Reuters. An additional 90 people were injured in the attack.

"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.

The attack on the steel mill comes just two days after other mobs burned and looted scores of foreign-owned factories in south Vietnam, believing they were Chinese-run, though many were actually Taiwanese or South Korean.

No deaths were reported in those initial attacks, and the Vietnamese government has since tried to crack down on protesters. More than 600 have been arrested since Tuesday.

The protests have sparked an exodus of Chinese nationals, many of whom have fled to neighbouring countries or further.

More than 600 are believed to have gone to Cambodia, while scores gathered at Ho Chi Minh airport and bought one-way tickets to Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore and China.

On Thursday, China's embassy in Vietnam urged the police to take "effective measures" to protect Chinese citizens' safety and legal rights. China's tourism administration urged Vietnam-bound tourists to carefully consider their plans, while Taiwan's ministry of foreign affairs was printing thousands of stickers saying "I am from Taiwan" in Vietnamese and English and distributing them to local Taiwanese business owners, to help them avoid the wrath of anti-China mobs.

Anti-Chinese sentiment, while never far below the surface in Vietnam, has hit a formidable peak since Beijing's deployment of the oil rig in disputed waters in the South China Sea on 1 May.

In an attempt to assert sovereignty Vietnam quickly sent a flotilla of ships to the area; these became involved in skirmishes with 80 Chinese boats sent to protect the oil rig. China accused the Vietnamese ships of ramming its vessels after the Chinese fleet deployed water cannon against the Vietnamese. On Wednesday China reportedly sent two amphibious ships equipped with anti-air missiles as further defence.

The Vietnamese government has issued stark warnings to the Chinese that this "aggression", which had to date been met with Vietnamese diplomacy, would turn ugly if it continued.

Vietnam would "make no concession to China's wrongful acts", Major General Nguyen Quang Dam, the coast guard commander, told local media. He said: "Their violent acts have posed serious threats to the lives of Vietnamese members of law enforcement."

An article in the English-language daily Vietnam News was just as blunt: "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. "

"Over thousands of years we have shown we never cease fighting aggressors. 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", according to the state-run Global Times newspaper.