"Our coast is long, beautiful, we have to know how to keep it ..."

As a nation experiencing a history of thousands of years struggling to protect the border, Vietnam was penetrated more than anyone with the sacredness of "borders" and "territory".
October 17, 2020 | 11:40
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"To Vietnamese people, the national territory and borders are sacred, closely associated with the heroic history of thousands of years of building and defending the country ...". Photo: MOFA

“Before it was only nights and forests; Today, we have days, with the sky and the sea..."

On October 16, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs held a 45-year seminar on the National Border Committee (1975 - 2020) to pay tribute to the previous generations devoting themselves to building the "shape" of the country and educating the next generations.

Speaking at the seminar, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh emphasized that to Vietnamese people, the territory and national borders are sacred, closely associated with the heroic history of thousands of years of building and defending the country.

Over the centuries, generations of Vietnamese people always uphold the spirit of piety, but are also resilient, indomitable, ready to sacrifice their blood to protect the integrity of the national territory and peace.

Joining the flow of history, from being first named on the world map, “before there was only nights and forests, today we have days, the sky and the sea; our coast is long and beautiful, we must know how to keep it", Vietnamese generations have shed their blood to preserve the national independence and territorial integrity.

Many successive generations are still inheriting that tradition, with "the highest goal is the national interests and the nation", to firmly protect the sovereignty of the country. Vietnam, a nation has experienced many struggles to gain independence, the Vietnamese people are more penetrated with the divine nature of sovereignty and territory.

For that reason, the Government soon issued Decree 188-CP of October 6, 1975 establishing the Border Committee after the country's unification, the forerunner of the National Border Committee today.

Before 1975, our country's border line was mainly historical left by the French, nowadays, the entire length of more than 5,000 km of the land border, from Quang Ninh to Kien Giang, has been delimited, determined by a series of international legal documents signed between Vietnam and neighboring countries, as independent and sovereign states.

More than 450 landmarks planted in the late 19th century have been replaced by more than 5,000 regular and modern landmarks, clearly marking the border on the field.

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Generations attached to border and territorial affairs were honored at the conference. Photo MOFA

Previously, we had only a territorial sea with a width of a few nautical miles along more than 3,260 km of the coast. Now, according to UNCLOS 1982, our country's space of exercising sovereignty and jurisdiction is expanded many times, more than 2 times the area of ​​the national territory.

Along with that, we have flexibly and creatively diversified solutions to deal with and handle overlapping waters with other countries, such as: to joint management of historic waters with Cambodia, joint exploitation of the continental shelf with Malaysia or demarcate a maritime boundary with Thailand, delimit the Gulf of Tonkin with China and delimit the continental shelf with Indonesia.

Our sovereignty over the two archipelagos of Truong Sa and Hoang Sa

It is absolute that our sovereignty over the two archipelagos of Truong Sa and Hoang Sa, the delimitation of the sea with neighboring countries under UNCLOS 1982.

“The National Border Committee has done well in presiding over political, diplomatic, communication and legal struggles, contributing to protecting our sovereignty over the two archipelagos of Hoang Sa and Truong Sa; national sovereignty, sovereign right and jurisdiction in the Bien Dong Sea in the context of increasingly complicated and unpredictable regional disputes", said Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh.

In addition, the Deputy PM also assigned the National Border Committee to grasp the situation and development on the field to proactively build solutions to handle and protect our country's rights and interests, avoiding being passive and unexpected.

In response, Chairman of the National Border Committee Le Hoai Trung gives a pledge never to be "passive, unexpected" to a very sacred issue in the national subconscious.

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