Bored islands garrison wins Vietnam army's communist quiz
HANOI - Bored soldiers serving on the unhabited islets and reefs of the disputed Spratly islands have scooped top prize in the
Vietnamese army's quiz for knowledge of revolutionary history, the official media reported Saturday.
The young conscripts saw off competition from 176,897 other entries to secure winnings of more than 1,000 dollars, four times
the average annual income here.
The servicemen were flown in from the remote South China Sea archipelago to receive their reward from communist party chief
Le Kha Phieu at a ceremony in the capital Friday.
The quiz was launched by the General Politics Department of the Vietnam People's Army between March and September as
part of its traditional propaganda work in the forces.
For all of the five countries who maintain garrisons in the disputed archipelago, sustaining morale among conscripts required to
serve on tiny islands, many of them no bigger than a football pitch, has proved a problem.
In June Vietnam announced that had it had provided television sets and video recorders to all of its garrisons in the archipelago
and set up broadcasting stations on five of the larger islands under its control.
Libraries have been established on the bigger islands while smaller islets receive regular supplies of books, and young people
are regularly flown in from the mainland for "cultural exchange activities," the official VNA news agency said.
"Island soldiers also engage in planting vegetables and raising domestic animals to add more nutrition to their daily meals ... As a
result 98 percent of island soldiers are regularly classified as being in good health," it added.
The archipelago's reefs and shoals have a land area of just 10 square kilometres spread over nearly 180,000 square kilometres
of sea.
According to a 1996 paper setting out Hanoi's territorial claim, Vietnam controls 20 of the islets, the Philippines eight, China
six, Malaysia three and Taiwan one.
Brunei also lays claim to part of the archipelago which is hotly contested because of its strategic position on the trade route
between northeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe, and the oil reserves which are believed to lie beneath the seas around it.
Talks between the Association of South East Asian Nations and China on a proposed code of conduct for the disputed area
have so far borne no fruit.
There have been no armed clashes on the islands since the late 1980s.
Agence France Presse - November 4, 2000.
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