The Chinese Consulate-General in Ho Chi Minh City has called for an investigation and for guilty staff to be punished, after a Chinese tourist’s passport was allegedly defaced with offensive language by Vietnamese border guards.
Advertisement
Vietnamese protesters display maps of the South China Sea marked with “No!” in a July protest outside the Chinese Embassy in Seoul, South Korea.
Upon landing, she handed her passport to a customs officer as part of normal procedures.
The offensive words were apparently written over the faint imprint of the nine dash-line which marks China’s territorial claim on the South China Sea.
Beijing is raising the issue with Vietnam to seek an explanation as to why the immigration official wrote the “F word” on two pages of the woman’s passport.
The incident comes at a time of high tensions in the region and weeks after the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration’s ruled this month against China’s claims to the South China Sea.
The move was aimed at avoiding inadvertent recognition of China’s territorial claims, Vietnamese media had reported.
Angered by China’s stance, Vietnamese officials have refused to stamp new Chinese passports featuring the nine-dash line, issuing separate on-arrival visas instead to people coming from China.
But now a customs official is said to have committed a rogue act by scribbling an obscenity on passport pages where the nine-dash line was printed.
The Chinese embassy in Ho Chi Minh City has been tasked with dealing with the issue, the Chinese Consulate-General to Vietnam said. The map, which China started printing on three pages in each passport since 2012, is a source of much anger against China in Southeast Asia, because it outlines a large chunk of the South China Sea that China says belongs to it.
Ms Zhong’s passport was handed to Vietnamese border staff when she was entering the border at Tan Son Nhat International Airport.
Advertisement
Vietnam must ensure that such insulting behavior will not happen again, it said. The offensive wording was written on pages 8 and 24 of Zhong’s passport. China, however, does not accept the tribunal’s authority over the matter and has rejected the ruling.
