The Vietnam Fisheries Society (VINAFIS) has called on the government and relevant state agencies to request a search for the vessel responsible for attacking and sinking a local fishing boat on Tuesday.
The fisheries society has submitted a document to the government, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to report the assault of the vessel, according to VINAFIS president Nguyen Viet Thang.
Thang expressed his condemnation of the inhumane action of the ship responsible, which directly threatened the lives of the victims and cause heavy damage to their properties.
On behalf of the VINAFIS, the president called for the search of the attacking vessel, demanding that its operators compensate for the damages.
He also demanded that competent authorities promptly deal with any similar cases, preventing the situation from happening in the future in order to ensure safety for Vietnamese fishermen during their offshore operations.
At around 11:00 pm on Tuesday, the fishing boat QNa-95959, which was carrying 34 crew members, was assaulted while operating in the maritime area near Vietnam’s Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelago, some 350 nautical miles northeast of the central city of Da Nang, resulting in the crew’s evacuation from the ship.
Pham Phu Trung, captain of a local fishing boat operating nearby, was notified of the incident at 6:30 am on Wednesday and managed to rescue all of Thanh’s crew by 8:30 am the same day.
During a radio conversation Pham Phu Thanh, captain of the attacked ship, affirmed that he and his crew were attacked by a Chinese vessel but were not able to identify its license number because of the dark.
The victims were then transferred to rescue ship 412 and brought to the mainland in the central city of Da Nang on Thursday afternoon, who were still in poor health conditions.
“We thought we were going to die as the attack of the vessel was too horrifying,” captain Thanh recounted.
It was not an accident, Thanh asserted, adding that the brutal operators of the ship rammed into his fishing boat on purpose.
According to president Thang, the assault caused the loss of all fishing equipments, along with 30 metric tons of dried squid, with total financial damage estimated at nearly VND10 billion (US$449,000).
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