Oil rig protest turns into riot
Scores of factories owned by foreign firms damaged.
Thousands of protesters looted and set fire to foreign-run factories in Vietnam as a protest of China’s placement of an oil rig boils over.
HANOI, VIETNAM — More than 400 people were arrested after riots in which scores of foreign-owned factories were damaged or destroyed in an industrial area in southern Vietnam, authorities said Wednesday.
The upheaval Tuesday was the worst public unrest in recent Vietnamese history, involving thousands of workers. It reportedly began as demonstrations against China’s stationing of an oil drilling rig in disputed waters off Vietnam’s coast. But the protests boiled over into widespread violence, as workers rampaged through a dense industrial area in a northern suburb of Ho Chi Minh City, once known as Saigon.
The area has rows of cavernous buildings where thousands of mostly young workers stitch together sneakers and clothing for sale around the world.
“No one knows what really caused the riots — only initially did it seem to be about the Chinese,” Truong Huy San, an author and well-known blogger, said by telephone after touring the industrial zone. “These were totally uncontrolled crowds.”
The great majority of the affected factories and workshops were owned by Taiwanese or South Korean companies.
“There was quite a lot of damage,” said Chen Bor-show, the director-general for the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, which functions as Taiwan’s de facto consulate in Ho Chi Minh City.
The South Korean For- eign Ministry said one South Korean citizen was hospitalized with injuries that were not life-threatening.
San, the blogger, who uses the pen name Huy Duc, said some of the workshops were severely damaged. “It’s kind of a disaster zone,” he said. “Everyone is scared. There are hundreds of factories that will have to close for weeks or months.”
San said the riots are a signal to Vietnam’s authoritarian government that workers need avenues to express their grievances. Independent unions are banned in Vietnam.
“I don’t know whether the government recognizes the very important message that was sent from this province,” he said. “The government needs to do something to change their thinking and policy.”
Tran Van Nam, the vice chairman of Binh Duong province, where the violence occurred, was quoted by a Vietnamese online news site, VNExpress, as saying that around 19,000 workers were involved in the protests Tuesday.