Hanoi Police to Probe Individuals Disrupting Gac Ma Commemoration

By Vu Quoc Ngu | Mar 18, 2015

Hanoi’s police will launch an investigation into spontaneous individuals who tried to stop  a group of several hundreds of activists to commemorate the fallen soldiers killed in Gac Ma (Johnson South Reef) in the city’s center last Saturday, said Major General Nguyen Duc Chung, head of the city’s police.

Speaking with local media on March 17, Gen. Chung said on Mar 14, hundreds of patriotic Vietnamese gathered at the city’s center to pay a tribute to 64 Vietnamese soldiers murdered by China in 1988 when the giant communist nation militarily attacked Gac Ma (Johnson South Reef) in the sea.

However, there were a group of young communists with communist flags and red clothes trying to prevent the commemoration. They occupied these places that activists want to lay flowers and quarrel with them, even attacked some of female, elders and children.

Gen. Chung said the activities of the individuals were unacceptable while ordering the city’s security forces to protect the patriotic activists from them. They are not people from the Ho Chi Minh Youth Communist Union nor public opinion shapers under the city communist party’s propaganda department, Mr. Chung said.

However, these trouble makers are members of the youth communist union, activists said, adding that they received instruction from the city’s security forces to disturb the commemoration.

One of them was recently awarded by the city’s police for activities against democratic advocates, activists affirmed.

Last years, Hanoi’s authorities also sent their people to occupy historic places in a bid not to allow anti-China activists to lay flowers to pay tributes for soldiers and people killed by China in 1979, when Beijing sent over 300,000 soldiers to attack six Vietnamese northernmost provinces.

Meanwhile, Vietnam spends VND17 billion (792,000) to build a monument for Gac Ma soldiers in the central province ofKhanh Hoa.