To objectively display happenings in the sea waters of the Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelago where China illegitimately is placing its Haiyang Shiyou 981 drilling rig, Vietnam escorted a group of international correspondents to the site two weeks ago.

They come from major news outlets in the world such as AP, Bloomberg, and Wall Street Journal of the US; AFP from France; Reuters from UK; and Kyodo, Asahi, and NHK from Japan.

They were taken to Hoang Sa by the Vietnam Coast Guard ship numbered 4033 on a journey departing from May 12 from Da Nang City in central Vietnam.

Yatagai Toshihiro, head of the Bangkok-based branch of Japan’s Kyodo news agency, admitted after the journey that the Chinese accusations stating they were attacked by Vietnamese ships had been fabricated.

Speaking with his colleagues after witnessing happenings in Hoang Sa of Vietnam, the Japanese correspondent said, “To see is to believe. I saw Vietnamese ships turn on speakers to require China to withdraw their drilling rig and ships from Vietnamese waters.

“I have abundant objective materials to prove that Chinese ships used water cannons and smashed into Vietnamese ships in the water area.

“The accusations that Chinese ships were attacked by Vietnamese vessels have been made up.”

He added that, “Chinese ships were very aggressive and arrogant.”

The journey

It was organized so urgently that many journalists had no time to bring suits with them, except their working tools such as cameras and laptops.

A Japanese correspondent said it was “the trip of truth” because the Hoang Sa archipelago has been a ‘blind spot’ to the world media.

Yatagai Toshihiro got on the 4033 ship in time after boarding a flight from Bangkok to Da Nang on May 12.

AP correspondent Dinh Tran Trung Hau judged that the move of Vietnam to allow international journalists to access the disputed site was necessary, proving Vietnam’s transparency about Hoang Sa.

None of his AP colleagues in Beijing have been allowed to get on a Chinese marine surveillance ship, said the journalist with ten years experience of working for AP.

Chinese officials aboard their ships at Vietnam's Hoang Sa seemed to realize the presence of international correspondents on a trip accessing the southwest of the rig, Chinese ships deflated their arrogance in the direction.

They did not attack with water cannons and ram into Vietnamese ships. However, each Vietnamese ship was besieged by three or four Chinese marine police ships.

The marine police ship 31101 of China had their gun emplacements uncovered from canvas and pointed the guns towards Vietnamese ships to threaten them.

Many marine police ships of China intentionally crossed at the prows of Vietnamese ships to threaten.

The crossings were filmed by other Chinese ships from the back to forge evidence that a Vietnamese ship was about to smash into Chinese ships.

Yet, in the other direction in the southeast of the rig where there were no journalists, Chinese ships kept on displaying their arrogance by firing water cannons and intentionally slammed into Vietnamese ships.

Later, the international correspondents were divided into two groups on two ships.

The journalists had two ways to transmit their information and images to their agencies: sending the information directly via satellite by their laptops and other tools, or sending it by the Vinasat satellite system installed on Vietnamese ships to the headquarters of the Vietnam Coast Guard in Hanoi before the articles were transmitted to their offices.

The latter was faster in speed. The success of the trip is that the correspondents sent home numerous images taken at the scene, featuring objectively what happened in the waters.

All the pictures show that Chinese ships attacked Vietnamese boats by firing water cannons at or smashing into them.

A popular image used by AFP, AP, and Reuters has become well known in the world, displaying the Chinese marine police vessel 31101 attacking a Vietnamese ship.

China has supplied no image to demonstrate their accusations that their ships were assaulted.

The only picture that China News Agency gave AFP showed that Vietnamese ship KN 762 seemed to hit Chinese ship 46001.

However, the image cannot cheat the journalists who witnessed the incident at the scene.

The fact was that the Chinese ship crossed at the prow of KN 762 and another Chinese ship from behind took the image.

The Chinese rig is now located at 15°33’38’’ North latitude and 111°34’62’’ East longitude, about 25 nautical miles east-southeast of Tri Ton Island, part of Vietnam’s Hoang Sa archipelago in the East Vietnam Sea.

This position lies well within 200 nautical miles of Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone and continental shelf as ruled by the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to which China is a signatory