Police break up South China Sea rally in Vietnam

HANOI – Vietnamese police forcibly dispersed an anti-China rally on Sunday, arresting at least 10 people, including a cameraman, after a series of protests over tensions in the South China Sea.

Plain-clothed police moved in to detain the demonstrators almost immediately after they gathered within sight of the Chinese embassy in the capital Hanoi, an AFP reporter observed.

The protesters struggled as the security men led them onto a public bus, which had been on standby in the area, and took them away to an unknown location. “We did not do anything!” they shouted.

Among those seen detained was a Vietnamese cameraman for Japan’s NHK television.

An unprecedented series of protests — which are not common in authoritarian Vietnam — have taken place peacefully in Hanoi for the past five weekends in a row over an escalating maritime dispute.

China and Vietnam have been at loggerheads over the potentially oil-rich Spratly and Paracel island groups in the South China Sea, which also straddle commercial shipping lanes vital to global trade.

There was only one known arrest during the Vietnamese rallies of previous weeks. Analysts said such protests had been allowed by authorities because they served the government’s purpose of expressing displeasure with Beijing.