Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Vietnam mobs set fire to foreign factories in anti-China riots

Via WiscoDave

A man stands on a wall to watch smoke from a damaged Chinese owned shoe factory in Vietnam's southern Binh Duong province May 14, 2014. REUTERS-Thanh Tung Truong


Thousands of Vietnamese set fire to foreign factories and rampaged in industrial zones in the south of the country in an angry reaction to Chinese oil drilling in a part of the South China Sea claimed by Vietnam, officials said on Wednesday.

The brunt of Tuesday's violence, one of the worst breakdowns in Sino-Vietnamese relations since the neighbors fought a brief border war in 1979, appears to have been borne by Taiwanese firms in the zones in Binh Duong and Dong Nai provinces that were mistaken for Chinese-owned companies.

A police official in Binh Duong province, speaking by telephone, said about 200 people had been arrested.

"We are working on other areas in the province ... We haven't seen any injuries," the official said.
Photographs posted on social media sites and blogs, purportedly of the aftermath of the violence, showed blackened shipping containers, smashed windows and several burnt out vehicles that had been overturned.

Some Taiwanese firms had spray-painted messages on the road and across their gates saying "We Support Vietnam" in an effort to distinguish themselves from Chinese enterprises.

                                                                       More @ Reuters

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