Vietnam has asked China to release a fishing boat and 12 sailors detained about one week ago while fishing in waters around the Paracel archipelago.
The boat was one of three Vietnamese fishing vessels captured last Sunday in the area, foreign ministry spokesman Le Dung said late on Friday.
“This act of the Chinese side is a clear violation of Vietnam’s sovereignty and sovereign rights in the Eastern Sea,” he said, using Vietnam’s term for the South China Sea.
Vietnam’s foreign ministry announced early this month that China had ordered a fishing ban in some areas of the South China Sea “including those under Vietnam’s sovereignty.”
A long-standing dispute between the two countries over ownership of the Paracels and a more southerly archipelago, the Spratleys, has recently escalated.
Fishermen are caught in the middle.
Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs last Monday sent a diplomatic note to the Chinese embassy in Hanoi, asking for the three boats and 37 fishermen to be released, Dung said.
Two of them returned home on Thursday with 25 fishermen. Dung said Vietnam was asking China to return the other boat “and not to conduct any further acts to prevent the normal activities of Vietnamese fishermen in the waters under Vietnam’s sovereignty.”
Fishermen interviewed by reporters in central Vietnam last week said they have seen an increasing number of armed Chinese patrol ships over the past two months in disputed waters around the Paracel archipelago, and near China’s Hainan Island.
The fishermen say they try to avoid the controversial areas but China’s stepped-up enforcement has put their incomes at risk. They allege some of their colleagues have been detained on Hainan or had their nets and fish seized.
Sailors claim thousands of dollars in fines have to be paid to secure a crew’s freedom.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS