Vietnam Rejects China’s South China Sea Fishing Ban

[cochine]

Phu Yen fishermen urged to maintain fishing activities
Fishermen in the Central coastal province of Phu Yen has been encouraged to maintain fishing activities in Vietnam’s territorial waters after China promulgated a temporary ban on fishing activities in the East Sea (South China Sea).
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In a recent document, the provincial People’s Committee said the ban is worthless as it prohibited fishing activities in Vietnam’s territorial waters.

It asked the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the provincial Department of Information and Communications, the provincial Border Guard Command, and press agencies to inform local fishermen about China’s fishing ban, while calling on local fishermen to organize fishing activities in groups to easily support each other in case of necessity.

Fishing vessels licensed to go fishing in the shared fishing grounds in the Gulf of Tonkin in 2017-2018 should not operate in the Eastern area of the demarcation line in the Gulf from May 1 to August 16, the document said.

Photo for illustration. Source: baophuyen.com.vn
The provincial People’s Committee assigned the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development to working with the provincial Border Guard Command to strictly manage and control the departure of fishing boats and their offshore fishing trips during the period, thus promptly informing sudden situations arising at sea to the committee.

In a recent announcement, the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture said that the fishing ban would last from May 1 to August 16, 2018, covering the East Sea, including the Gulf of Tonkin and Vietnam’s territorial waters.

In response to China’s move, the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) has said that China’s temporary ban is null.

The Vietnam Fisheries Society (VINAFIS) has also voiced its protest against China’s unilateral decision to ban fishing in the East Sea, saying that it has no validity.

The ban hampers fishing activities of Vietnamese fishermen and violates Vietnam’s sovereignty over the Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelago and territorial waters in the Tonkin Gulf as well as its legitimate rights and interests.

It also infringes international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and related international legal documents, and runs counter to the spirit and wording of the Declaration on the Conduct of the Parties in the East Sea (DOC) signed between ASEAN and China in 2002.

China’s unilateral action is not in line with the development trend of Vietnam-China relations and is not beneficial to peace and stability in the region, the association said.

The VINAFIS urged Vietnamese authorities to take effective measures to stop China’s action and increase patrols in the sea to protect fishermen and facilitate their fishing activities in Vietnam’s territorial waters.

Source: VNA

 

[xuxu1457]

FLASHPOINTS | SECURITY | EAST ASIA | SOUTHEAST ASIA
Is Vietnam Sending Its Maritime Militia to China’s Coast?
In recent weeks, hundreds of Vietnamese fishing boats have gathered near China’s Hainan province, site of a sensitive military base.

By Yan Yan
March 05, 2020

Map from the South China Sea Probing Initiative. Each green dot represents a Vietnamese fishing boat registered in the AIS during February 2020.

The South China Sea Probing Initiative (SCSPI) recently released Automatic Identification System (AIS) data showing more than 300 Vietnamese fishing boats gathering in the near seas of China’s Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan provinces in February — while China is busy fighting the coronavirus.

Illegal fishing from Vietnam is a long-standing problem. Even with a nearly 3,500 kilometer coastline, fish stocks in Vietnam’s near sea are depleting, and its fishermen have been trying to venture farther away to catch fish in the past years. The European Commission (EC) applied a yellow card warning on seafood from Vietnam in 2017 due to the failure of to prevent illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. The warning came out especially after a number of Vietnamese fishing fleets were caught illegally fishing in other countries’ waters.

Although Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung demanded that all related parties prevent illegal fishing in other countries’ waters after the EC decided to extend the yellow card in 2019, the situation hasn’t changed much. Vietnamese government officials have mentioned in the past that it is difficult to catch the illegal trawlers operating at sea since there are too many of them, and their engine capacity reaches 500-800 horsepower.

Recently Malaysia also reported an increase in the number of Vietnamese fishing vessels encroaching into its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), off the country’s east coast, in the past few months. Malaysia protested to Vietnam and is now seeking a bilateral agreement to solve the problem. Last year 141 Vietnam fishermen were detained by Malaysian authorities.

China and Vietnam settled a maritime boundary in the Gulf of Tonkin and a fishery cooperation agreement on December 25, 2000. However the AIS image from SCSPI shows that two-thirds of Vietnamese fishing vessels are on the Chinese side of the boundary line (the solid white line in the map below). Some of them may have a license to fish in the common fishing zone, but more than half of the boats are outside the zone (denoted by the dashed yellow line).
The AIS information shows that there are around 200 Vietnam fishing vessels surrounding the east coast of China’s Hainan province, many of them operating within 12 nautical miles of Sanya and Qionghai city (depicted by the white dashed line in the map above). Many analysts suspect that besides illegally fishing in China’s EEZ, Vietnamese fishing vessels are collecting intelligence on China’s military bases as well as naval and air military activities