Former Vice President
Nguyen Thi Binh has sent a letter on China’s violations of the Vietnamese
sovereignty to her friends around the world, affirming the Vietnamese people’s
desire for peace for development.
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Former Vice President Nguyen Thi Binh
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In her open letter, Binh
condemned China ’s illegal placement of its giant oil rig in the continental
shelf and exclusive economic zone of Vietnam with over 100 ships, including
military vessels, and aircraft protecting the rig from the beginning of May.
“This is a serious act,
violating the Vietnamese sovereignty and running counter to the 1982 United
Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,” she wrote.
Vietnam has used both
diplomatic channels and other mediums to communicate with China. It has also
sent some law enforcement ships to the area where the rig is illegally
standing, to ask China to respect Vietnam ’s sovereignty and withdraw the rig
from the Vietnamese waters, she said.
China has, to date, not
responded to the goodwill of Vietnam , instead choosing to take increasingly
aggressive actions, Binh added.
“I feel a stinging pain in
my heart when seeing images of many bigger Chinese ships ramming smaller
Vietnamese law enforcement vessels. What will happen next?”
She added world opinion was
concerned that China ’s actions would impact safety and freedom of
international navigation and threaten the peace and security of the whole
region. Meanwhile the Chinese side has preposterously blamed what is happening
on Vietnam ’s provocation, she stressed.
“Who can believe that
Vietnam, whose population is one-fifteenth of China’s, and whose GDP is up to
60 times smaller, is able to provoke China,” she asked.
She queried China ’s
so-called “nine dash” claim to monopolise the whole East Sea , ignoring
international law, especially UNCLOS 1982, as well as the world protest.
In her letter, Binh
reminded readers of China ’s deployment of more than 200,000 troops to “teach
Vietnam a lesson” just after the anti-US war ended. “What was the lesson? It
was difficult to believe that a giant socialist nation chose to attack a
smaller socialist country that had just escaped from war. But it was true,” she
wrote.
In 1974, when the war was
still going on, China brazenly occupied Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelago of
Vietnam by force, and in 1988, it again attacked and occupied some islands in
Truong Sa (Spartly), another archipelago of Vietnam .
Today, the Vietnamese
people are endeavouring to develop the country, sparing no effort to create an
environment of peace and stability and willing to cooperate with other
countries for development, she said.
“We have even boosted our
ties with the United State, who caused pain to us in the past, because Vietnam
advocates looking to the future and putting aside the past. For China, our
major neighbour, despite the ups and downs in our history and the disputes that
still need to be settled, we always keep in mind that the two peoples stood
shoulder by shoulder in the struggle for national liberation. So Vietnam always
desires to have good relations with China, and supports solving all disputes
through peaceful measures based on mutual trust,” she said.
“And we have done so,
acting with modesty and restraint,” she wrote, but stressing that independence,
freedom and sovereignty are sacred things for each nation and the Vietnamese
people will struggle to the last to safeguard these.
“ Vietnam desires a just,
real and long-lasting peace for the Vietnamese people and other nations in the
region and the world, as well as friendship with China and other countries, but
it must be a true and sincere friendship with mutual respect,” Binh said.
“We hope you will support
us like you did in the past,” she urged, calling for China to immediately
withdraw the rig from Vietnam ’s continental shelf, and respect the country’s
sovereignty in accordance with international law.
In conclusion, she said she
believes that justice and the law will prevail, when everyone acts firmly in
solidarity.
Source: VNA/VNN
