Document supports Viet Nam's sovereignty claim

News Desk
Viet Nam News
Publication Date: 02-07-2009

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs last Friday received a royal document showing that Vietnamese kings of the Nguyen Dynasty sent soldiers to set up bases at the Hoang Sa (Paracel) Archipelago.
The document is expected to help Viet Nam reaffirm its sovereignty rights over the archipelago.
Dubbed chau ban, an administrative document courtiers often submitted to the king for approval, it petitioned King Bao Dai to grant medals to a battalion from the central region for its "contributions in establishing a defensive outpost at Hoang Sa Archipelago".

The chau ban, written in quoc ngu (Romanised Vietnamese scripts), was submitted by courtier Pham Quynh, chief of the king’s civil cabinet, on February 15, 1939, and was marked chuan y (approved) by the country’s last king.

The document was later copied to send to executive officials. The original was kept at the Dong Cac House, the Royal Library.

It was later found by Hue-based researcher Phan Thuan An at the former mansion of Princess Ngoc Son, Bao Dai’s aunt and the grandmother of An’s wife.

"The document is a testimony to the country’s continual execution of its sovereignty over Hoang Sa," said historian Nguyen Nha, who has spent his career researching Viet Nam’s ownership of the archipelago.

Reaffirmation
The Chinese People’s Congress has recently decided to create the Sansha administrative town in Hainan Province. The town would cover three archipelagos in the East Sea, including the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa archipelagos of Viet Nam.

"Viet Nam strongly rejects the creation of Sansha Town and its inclusion of the two Vietnamese archipelagos [including Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago]," said Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung.

Dung said such an act was an encroachment on Viet Nam’s territory and was not in conformity with the common sense of the senior leaders of the two countries.

"The act was detrimental to the process of negotiation to find durable solutions to solve the maritime issue between the two nations," Dung said.

He reiterated Viet Nam’s consistent policy to settle all disputes through peaceful negotiations while respecting international laws and practice, especially the 1982 UN Law on the Sea and the spirit of the Code of Conducts for concerned parties on the East Sea, made in 2002 in order to maintain peace and stability in the East Sea and the region.