Vietnam’s Chinese flee unrest to Cambodia

Chen Qun squinted into the morning sunlight as she walked out of the customs and immigration office in Bavet, a small border town that serves as one of the main gateways for land travel between Cambodia and Vietnam. “I have no friends in Sviey Rieng so I will stay in a hotel, maybe for four days,” Chen, 25, told Al Jazeera. She is one of thousands of ethnic Chinese who have fled the recent violence in Vietnam since Wednesday. Sparked by China’s aggressive deployment of a $1bn oil rig roughly 110kms inside Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone, mob violence has led to an estimated 21 killings after crowds began targeting and looting foreign-owned businesses and factories south of Hanoi last week. According to a statement from the Vietnamese government, the rioters believed they were targeting Chinese-run facilities, but also mistakenly attacked several Taiwanese and South Korean businesses. Starting at 4am on Wednesday, Cambodian customs officer Lieutenant Prak Vibol Chey, 51, observed unusually large numbers of people massing on the Vietnamese side of the border, most of whom turned out to be ethnic Chinese. “We didn’t know what was happening. Some of them were walking and didn’t have any transportation,” recalled Chey. According to the Department of Immigration’s computerised records, more than 700 Chinese passport holders crossed into Cambodia on tourist visas over the course of the day. …

 Luc Forsyth
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/05/vietnam-chinese-flee-unrest-cambodia-201451873538689813.html