Sending Lambs to the Slaughter: Communist Party puts Vietnamese Fishermen’s Lives in Danger

Vũ Đông Hà - Translated by Jasmine Trần (Danlambao) - Vietnamese government officials and state-run media are using a propaganda campaign that depicts Vietnamese fishermen as heroes, who cling to the sea, protect their territorial waters, and help defend their country’s sovereignty. In doing so, these officials put the fishermen’s lives in threat, at the same time as they themselves avoid doing their duty to defend Vietnam. This act by of the Vietnamese government and the Communist party is irresponsible and cruel. Vietnamese fishermen, who have repeatedly suffered the brutal attacks of Chinese invading forces on the Vietnamese East Sea waters, are now used to promote the ‘patriotism’ of this Communist regime.

Whenever the nation is threatened by foreign invasion, fishermen are attacked and killed. The Vietnamese Minister of Defence, General Phung Quang Thanh, has shamelessly stated, ‘Viet Nam has exercised a high-level of restraint, not used airplanes, frigates, battleships. We have only used vessels of fisheries surveillance forces, coastguards and fishing boats in coordination with the law enforcement forces to protect national sovereignty.’(1)

He ignores the fact that his military forces, not the fishermen and their fishing boats, are responsible for defending and preserving the country’s territory and waters. To support the Minister of Defence in his plan of using fishermen to do the army’s task, the Minister of Public Health, Nguyen Thị Kim Tien, has contributed her part with her ‘Health Department and fishermen cling to the sea together’ program.

When the boats of Ly Son’s fishermen were rammed and sunk by Chinese vessels, Vietnamese fishermen were killed and injured, falling into the sea without being helped or rescued by any Vietnamese Navy forces. Minister Kim Tien’s response was to donate 300 medicine cabinets and medical equipment to the fishermen. She said: ‘It is very important that each member of the Public Health Department should express their national spirit, their love for the country, and their determination to protect the country’s sovereignty, alongside with the fishermen, against the infringement of sovereignty of the Chinese when they installed oil rig Haiyang Shi You 981 in our territorial waters.’

In Parliament, Dong Nai MP Dang Ngọc Tung said, ‘Fishermen are willing to go off-shore for fishing and at the same time protect the Vietnamese traditional fishing zone.’ However, in an interview, he said, ‘I’ve talked to the fishermen, especially to the members of the Vietnam Fisheries Trade Union, and they have complained of having borrowed loans with extremely high interest rates from the usurers. So the fishing profit cannot cover all the expenses...’ If the fishermen did not go to sea they could not repay their debt, and would starve. But he went on to say that the fishermen had a mission of being ‘willing to go off-shore for fishing, protecting the Vietnamese traditional fishing zone, and at the same time protecting the motherland territory.’

What other help have the fishermen had, apart from the nutritious supplements of the Minister of Public Health? When asked by Voice of America, ‘Will Vietnamese law enforcement forces have any plan to escort and guard the Vietnamese fishing boats the same way China does to theirs?’, Nguyen Ngọc Oai, head of the Department of Fisheries and Resources Protection replied, ‘Oh no! We do not escort and protect them as our resources are limited. We only have 30 boats for the entire waters, and we concentrate on propaganda, our main job. And as for the fishermen’s incidents, we watch them from a distance to observe and support, but we do not follow to protect the fishing boats.’

Despite many tragedies that occurred to the Vietnamese fishermen on the sea by the Chinese invasion, the party propaganda machine still keeps singing the songs of the death in such articles as: (2)

- Fishermen of Central Vietnam go off-shore protecting maritime sovereignty and islands

- Fishermen of Ly Son’s families bravely defend maritime sovereignty and islands

- Fishermen cling to the sea to determine national sovereignty and make money

- Building high performance steel vessels for fishermen to go off-shore

- On the rough sea

- Giving 1000 national flags to the fishermen

- Phu Yen, various types of propaganda, support fishermen to cling to the sea

The People’s Police newspaper even goes further into the ‘patriotism and defending sovereignty’ of the poor fishermen by a ‘real people-real story’ article: ‘An aged fisherman in Danang built a high performance ship to go off-shore, make money, and rescue fishing boats in the Paracel fishing zone.’

Certainly, the Vietnamese images described by the police are so valiant! The elderly fisherman has built a big, powerful boat on his own to make money and ‘rescue’ people in danger, while the law enforcement boat stays far away, watching, and ‘checking… the fish’. They praised the fisherman’s wife as a fearless superwoman. ‘Ms Mung even boasted of her family's courage. After each fishing trip, she was the first person to hear about the deadly clashes of the fishermen of Central Vietnam from the father, Toan, and his son. And more than anybody else, she knows that to get a full of catch for her family’s boat and of other fishermen’s boats, the fishermen have to pay with their own lives, their courage, and their patience against the appalling tactics of the Chinese vessels.’

The Vietnamese Communists have been very manipulative in using their people for their own purposes. That strategy was used by Ho Chi Minh and is still used today by his successors. It means that the longer the party rules the country, the smaller the country will be, as its land and sea are gradually lost into the hands of China.

Vũ Đông Hà