30/05 Vietnam blasts China aggression, demands compensation

Monday,  May 30,2011,20:31 (GMT+7)

HCMC – Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry on Friday staunchly opposed China over the previous day’s intrusion of three Chinese marine surveillance vessels deep into Vietnam’s continental shelf and their sabotage of the country’s economic operations.

A Foreign Ministry official said a diplomatic note was handed out to the Chinese embassy in Hanoi on Friday protesting the Chinese aggression, which took place on Thursday, Vietnam News Agency reports. Vietnam also demanded China’s compensation for the loss caused by the unlawful act, and urged China to cease and prevent the recurrence of activities that violate Vietnam’s sovereign right to its exclusive economic zone and continental shelf.

These points were also reiterated on Sunday by the Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson Nguyen Phuong Nga, who asserted that China’s action seriously violated Vietnam’s sovereignty over its exclusive economic zone and continental shelf.

“Vietnam demands China to cease and prevent the recurrence of such activities… and to pay compensation to Vietnam,” she said.

Early on Thursday, three Chinese marine surveillance ships intruded into Vietnam’s waters off Phu Yen Province, approached Binh Minh 02 ship that was doing seismic surveys at a location 120 miles off Dai Lanh Cape off Phu Yen. The three Chinese vessels harassed Binh Minh 02 ship operated by PetroVietnam, and even cut off the exploration cables of the local ship.

The Chinese ships lingered on for more than a day in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone – within 200 miles under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) – and threatened operations of PetroVietnam before backing off later, said PetroVietnam’s Deputy General Director Do Van Hau.

Hau told a press conference in Hanoi that on May 26, the Binh Minh 02 ship’s radar at around 5.58 am detected a strange vessel moving quickly towards the survey area and five minutes later it also saw two other ships approaching.

The local ship had to stop its work on May 26 to gather in damaged equipment for repairing. The ship repaired the equipment on the spot and resumed its operations by 6:00am on May 27, he added.

Hau added that the three Chinese marine surveillance vessels hindered the normal operations of the Binh Minh 02 seismic ship and then threatened the Binh Minh 02 ship, saying that the Vietnamese ship violated China’s sovereignty. The local ship’s crew rejected the Chinese marine surveillance vessels’ arguments and affirmed that it was operating legally in the territorial waters of Vietnam.

The Chinese action gravely violated Vietnam’s sovereignty, said the Foreign Ministry official. Furthermore, it also violated the UNCLOS as well as the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), signed between ASEAN and China in 2002.