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Vietnam’s foreign ministry condemned on Wednesday China’s “brutal behavior” during a violent attack on Vietnamese fishers off the Paracel Islands in the disputed South China Sea.
The 10 fishermen were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars’ worth of fish and equipment on Sunday in the resource-rich waterway claimed almost wholly by China and partially by Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei.
Vietnam “resolutely protests the brutal behavior of Chinese law enforcement forces against Vietnamese fishermen and fishing vessels operating in the Hoang Sa archipelago of Vietnam,” foreign ministry spokesperson Vietnam Pham Thu Hang said in a statement, using the Vietnamese term for the Paracel Islands.
“The above actions of Chinese law enforcement forces seriously violated Vietnam’s sovereignty” over the archipelago, the statement said.
Four of the Vietnamese crew were taken to hospital on Monday after arriving at Quang Ngai port, according to the state-run Tien Phong newspaper, which said the men were attacked by around 40 people for three hours.
“Wearing checkered clothes, they cruelly beat us with iron bars,” captain Nguyen Thanh Bien was quoted as saying, adding that he fell unconscious for around an hour after the attack.
