(BGF) – According to AP News, in an effort to manage the wave of indignation of anti-China protesters, Hanoi’s government deployed dancers to stop them from making speeches and getting close to the statue of Ly Thai To, the founder of Hanoi.
Click here to read the full article.
Vietnam deploys dancers to foil protests
February 16, 2014 | By Chris Brummitt
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Anti-China protesters hoping to lay wreaths at a famous statue in the Vietnamese capital on Sunday were obstructed by an unusual sight of ballroom dancers and an energetic aerobics class held to a thumping sound system.
(Photo Credit: Associated Press)
The demonstrators suspect the government deployed the dancers as a way to stop them from getting close to the statue and make their speeches inaudible. The few who tried to get close to the statue of Ly Thai To, the founder of Hanoi and a nationalist icon, were shooed away.
The protesters were marking the 35th anniversary of a bloody border war between China and Vietnam, where anger over Beijing’s increasingly assertive territorial claims on islands in the South China Sea that Hanoi insists belong to it is already running high.
Relations with China, Vietnam’s ideological ally and major trading partner, are a highly sensitive domestic political issue for Hanoi’s rulers. They don’t want anger on the street against China to spread to other areas of its repressive rule.
Click here to continue reading.