A violent clash erupted on the sea off Keelung yesterday, when Taiwanese fishermen injured 7 Chinese fishermen hired by other Taiwanese fishing boats.
According to the coast guard, the violence was the result of Taiwanese fishermen taking revenge for a boat collision that happened on Sunday. The Taiwanese fishermen were from Suao (蘇澳), Ilan (宜蘭) County.
The coast guard said that the Suao fishing boat Man Fu Lai (滿福來), while fishing near Keelung on Sunday afternoon, collided with a "floating dorm" (海上旅館), the Min Chiang No. 1 (民強一號), which houses Chinese fishermen. In the struggle which followed, some Taiwanese sailors were beaten up and the Chinese, who were armed, seized the captain of the Man Fu Lai and demanded compensation for damage to the floating dorm, the coast guard said.
Floating dorms are boats anchored offshore which have undergone refits and are used to accommodate Chinese workers hired by the Taiwanese fishing industry.
The Chinese laborers are not allowed to land in Taiwan so their employers pick them up on the way to the fishing grounds.
The Min Chiang No. 1 houses some 80 Chinese fishermen, according to the Keelung Fishermen's Association.
In the Sunday collision, the Keelung coast guard intervened and the two sides reached a settlement. The agreement said that the owner of the floating dorm would pay the medical expenses of the injured Suao sailors and the Man Fu Lai would provide compensation for damage sustained to the floating dorm.
Apparently still bearing a grudge against the Chinese fishermen, however, the Man Fu Lai revisited the scene yesterday morning in the company of two other Suao boats, with around 30 people in total on board.
A Taiwanese manager of the floating dorm who witnessed the fight said it was "appalling."
"It was really vicious. They just came and beat people like mad with glass bottles and iron bars. They even shot people with flares. They could have killed somebody," said a witness who had been repairing the damage done to the floating dorm in the previous incident at the time of yesterday's attack.
He said the Suao sailors announced that they were only going to beat fishermen from China, not Taiwan, so he was spared.
The Suao sailors attacked indiscriminately, regardless of whether their victims had been involved in the previous day's incident, according to the coast guard.
The witness said he asked the Chinese fishermen not to hit back. "Otherwise the situation would have been much worse," he said.
Seven Chinese fishermen were later taken to the hospital by coast guard personnel, one with a broken leg. A Suao sailor was also injured in the fight.
Keelung coast guard personnel were still questioning people from both sides as of press time last night.
Due to the large number of people involved, it will take some time to investigate the whole incident and decide how many Suao sailors to charge, a coast guard officer said.
RSS