By Mike IvesS and Thomas Fuller
HANOI, Vietnam — Thousands of workers rampaged through an industrial area in southern Vietnam on Tuesday in what reportedly began as protests against China’s stationing of an oil rig in disputed waters off of Vietnam’s coast.
The riots were some of the worst civil unrest in recent years and appear to have prompted restraints on the local media by Vietnam’s authoritarian government. An article about the protests that was posted online by a Vietnamese state newspaper on Tuesday was removed by Wednesday morning.
The Chinese Embassy in Hanoi issued a notice on Wednesday that urged Chinese living in Vietnam to “minimize unnecessary outings”.
A staff member at the Chutex Garment Factory north of Ho Chi Minh City said 8,000 to 10,000 workers were involved in the rampage at his factory.
“They burned the office,” said the staff member who agreed to speak on condition that his name not be used. The rioters “burned everything, all of the materials, computers, machines.”
Police units and fire fighters arrived at the factory Tuesday and “disbanded,” the rioters, he said. On Wednesday morning police “captured” around 15 to 20 men who were attempting to loot the premises, he said.
The Chutex factory, located in Song Than Industrial Park 2 in southern Binh Duong Province, is described on its web site as one of the largest garment exporters in Vietnam. Chutex International, the parent company, was founded by a Taiwanese garment executive.
It is unclear why rioters targeted a factory linked to Taiwan. Media in Hong Kong said workers might not have been distinguishing between mainland China and Taiwan, a self-governing island which also has claims to territory in the South China Sea.
Taiwan’s foreign ministry condemned the rioting. In a statement it called on the demonstrators to “exercise self-control, don’t behave irrationally, damage Taiwanese factory equipment or threaten the safety of Taiwanese business people, which could harm Taiwan’s willingness to invest and harm the longstanding friendly relations between the people of Taiwan and Vietnam.”
A report Tuesday on the website of state-controlled Tuoi Tre Newspaper said hundreds of workers from several firms staged a protest Monday evening against China’s decision this month to place an oil rig in a disputed area of the South China Sea. The report said the workers had marched toward the Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park 1, also in Binh Duong province. That report, which did not mention violence, remained online Wednesday.
A statement by the Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park on Wednesday said protests against China began on Monday and that on Tuesday protesters “targeted” companies that are owned or managed by “Chinese as well as Chinese expatriates working for other companies.” Protesters set fire to three factories but there were “no casualties,” the statement said.
“The local police are on site and have taken over security of both industrial parks,” the statement said.
An article in Phoenix News, which is based in Hong Kong, quoted a businesswoman described only as Yan who said the industrial zone where she worked resembled a “battlefield.” Taiwanese in the area had fled to hotels, she said.
A report Tuesday on the website of the Vietnamese state-controlled Thanh Nien Newspaper put the number of workers protesting at the park at 6,000. But by Wednesday morning, the report appeared to have been removed.
Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park says on its website that it has five locations in Vietnam, two of them in Binh Duong. It says the parks have collectively created more than 140,000 local jobs and attracted nearly 500 “customers” with $6.4 billion worth of investments and $8 billion in export value. The company was established in 1996 as a cooperation between the Vietnamese and Singaporean governments.
Demonstrations occur sporadically in Vietnam, typically over alleged land grabs by firms with deep ties to the authoritarian, one-party government. There have also been periodic strikes against working conditions in foreign-owned industrial parks.
But demonstrations of thousands of people are rare. It was unclear on Wednesday whether the activity in Binh Duong had been sanctioned by the state or not, and also whether local police had kept the protesting workers fully under control.
China’s massive oil rig is 140 miles off the coast of Vietnam, and about 17 miles from a small island claimed by both countries.
Vietnamese and Chinese vessels have collided a number of times near the rig.
Earlier this week John Kerry, the U.S. Secretary of State, told his Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, that the “introduction of an oil rig and numerous government vessels in waters disputed with Vietnam was provocative,” according to a U.S. State department spokesperson.
At media briefing on Tuesday the spokesperson, called the placement of the oil rig “unilateral action that appears to be part of a broader pattern of Chinese behavior to advance its claims over disputed areas in a matter that, in our view, undermines peace and stability in the region.”
But China’s state Xinhua news agency disputed the State Department’s account of Mr. Kerry’s conversation Tuesday.
“In fact, U.S. Secretary of State Kerry made no such comments during the phone conversation,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, was quoted as saying. She said Mr. Kerry did not use the word “provocative.”
Mr. Kerry’s message, the news agency said, was that the U.S. is not taking sides in the dispute.
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Mike Ives reported from Hanoi and Thomas Fuller from Bangkok. Reporting was contributed by Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong and Chau Doan from Hanoi, and Bree Feng contributed research from Beijing.
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