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Coast guard to bring skipper's body back home to Taiwan

The skipper of a Taiwanese fishing boat who was allegedly killed by Chinese crewmen on the high seas near Japan's Iwo Jima island in the Pacific Ocean will be escorted back to Taiwan next week, coast guard officials said yesterday.

The officials said that one of two patrol vessels sent to help the boat, the Hsinglung, from the port of Suao (蘇澳) in Ilan County, intercepted the vessel early yesterday about 95 nautical miles west of Iwo Jima.

The coast guard said that after officers boarded the fishing boat, two Chinese crewmen admitted in an initial investigation that they killed the skipper, Chen Mu-tsai (陳木財), with a knife, and that his body was put on ice in his cabin.

Chief engineer Huang Chin-hsin (黃進興) and the other crewmen are safe, the coast guard officers said.

chinese crew

The Hsinlung has eight Chinese crew, with only Chen and Huang being Taiwanese.

It is the second time that the boat's Taiwanese officers had been overpowered by Chinese fishery workers. In August 2004, Chen and Huang were held hostage by nine crewmen who then took the Hsinglung to Hawaii.

Chen had served as skipper on the ship for more than a decade, and because he had often run into trouble with crewmen hired from Pingtang, Fujian Province, he hired crewmen from Zhangzhou, also in Fujian, this year, but had problems with them also.
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