The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday it had asked its representatives in Tokyo to express their serious concerns to the government there about the a landing by Japanese right-wingers on the disputed Tiaoyutai islands in the East China Sea.
Nine members of Nihon Seinensya (Japan Youth Society) landed on the uninhabited, rocky islet at 7:04am and stayed there for about five hours, according to Japan's coast guard.
"The members, all men ... said they needed to do maintenance work on a lighthouse on the Uotsuri Island," the official said.
Taiwan's foreign ministry restated Taiwan's claims to ownership of the islands and protested to the Japanese government against the landing. It demanded the Japanese government prevent similar incidents from happening again.
The Nihon Seinensya built the lighthouse in 1978 and it needs to have the batteries replaced this year, the group said on its Web site.
They chartered a fishing vessel at Ishigaki Island, some 160km to the south of the disputed islet, and departed late Sunday, the coast guard said.
They reached the island using a rubber dinghy. The Japan Coast Guard sent several vessels to monitor the rightists' voyage but declined to specify how many ships were involved.
"We had been instructing them not to land on the island without approval from the state but they did not listen," the coast guard official said.
Japan declared the islands as part of its territory in 1895 and they were temporarily put under US control after World War II. They were returned to Japanese rule in 1972.
The island chain is claimed by Japan, China and Taiwan.
The simmering territorial dispute came to the fore in the early 1970s, when China and Taiwan made their claims to the islands after oil deposits were confirmed in the area by a UN agency.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
RSS