Vietnam Church asked to protect Taiwanese citizens

The archbishop of Taipei has appealed to Archbishop Bui Van Doc of Ho Chi Minh for Church protection to Taiwanese people in Vietnam as violent

Archbishop John Hung Shan-chuan

anti-China protests swept through Vietnam last week over a South China Sea territorial dispute.

Archbishop John Hung Shan-chuan called Archbishop Bui, seeking his approval to "open Church premises as temporary shelters for Taiwan merchants and their families" and to call on Vietnamese Catholics to safeguard the security of Taiwan residents there.

"Taiwan people invest in Vietnam because they love the country and the people there just as Taiwan people love the Vietnamese who come to work or marry in Taiwan," he told the Vietnamese archbishop.

"The Vietnam and Taiwan Catholic Church are on good terms," Archbishop Hung told ucanews.com, noting that Archbishop Bui has visited Taiwan and that there are more than 30 Vietnamese priests, nuns and seminarians in the Taipei archdiocese alone.

Father Pham Ngoc Ngon, chancellor of the Taipei archdiocese, told ucanews.com that Archbishop Bui stressed that "the riot was just a small group of people while most of the Vietnamese people are peaceful. He also asked Taiwan Catholics to pray that peace could be restored soon."

Anti-Chinese violence erupted in Binh Duong province on May 13 with 175 Taiwanese-owned businesses attacked and damaged. An additional 50 Taiwanese-owned businesses elsewhere in Vietnam were damaged, according to Taiwan's Ministry of Finance.

Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security said yesterday that two Chinese people were killed and about 200 injured when enraged mobs torched or otherwise damaged hundreds of foreign-owned businesses in protest of China's deployment of a drilling rig in the contested waters.

Authorities deployed hundreds of security personnel on Sunday to quell the violence and more than 300 suspected perpetrators are being prosecuted, Vietnamese officials said.

There were no reports of any further disturbances in Vietnam on Monday and Hanoi was calm, with authorities scaling back the heavy security presence that blocked access to the Chinese embassy and other key points in the city.

Photos posted on the official news site of the Ministry of Information showed what appeared to be extensive damage to a Taiwanese factory that was apparently mistaken for Chinese-owned premises.

Francis Kuo, Taipei  (May 19, 2014)

Source: ucanews.com