The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative caucus yesterday urged the government to abolish its temporary enforcement line in the Bashi Channel and assert its rights in its 200 nautical mile (370km) exclusive economic zone (EEZ) amid escalated tensions with the Philippines.
The Fisheries Agency has unilaterally designated the 20° north latitude line as its temporary enforcement line, marking the area where the navy will provide protection for Taiwanese fishermen on the South China Sea.
DPP Legislator Pan Men-an (潘孟安) told a press conference that Taiwan should abolish the line since Manila has never recognized it.
Given the public’s outrage over at Philippine Coast Guard personnel’s killing of 65-year-old fisherman Hung Shih-cheng (洪石成) on May 9, Taiwan should be more assertive in exercising its full rights in the EEZ to provide better protection to Taiwanese fishing boats, the lawmaker said.
The Philippines does not recognize Taiwan’s self-proclaimed EEZ, the majority of which overlaps with Manila’s 200 nautical mile EEZ, because Taiwan was not given the opportunity to sign the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) cited yesterday as the legal basis for Taiwan’s maritime rights in the Bashi Channel.
Asked about UNCLOS, Philippine presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda told a press conference at Manila yesterday that the shooting incident occurred in the Philippines’ EEZ.
Meanwhile, the DPP caucus said Ma must explain the abrupt change in the government’s assessment of Manila’s response to its ultimatum seen between a press conference at 1am on Wednesday and a news conference at 10pm on the same day.
At the first press conference held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the ministry described Manila’s response as “positive,” but needed more “clarity.”
The Ma government announced a series of sanctions against the Philippines at the second press conference held at the Executive Yuan, saying that Manila’s apology was “insincere.”
DPP Legislator Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩) said Ma, as a president, “cannot and should not evade his responsibilities by making Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lin (林永樂) a scapegoat in the mix-up.”
“Lin would not have called the press conference and made those comments if he was not authorized to do so by Ma,” she said.
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
GLOBAL STRATEGY: Indo-Pacific alliances need reinforcement to prevent Chinese occupation of Taiwan, which would threaten Japan, Hawaii and Australia, Pompeo said The US should officially recognize Taiwan as a free, independent nation and establish official diplomatic ties, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo told an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Friday. Every US president since Harry Truman has considered Taiwan’s existence to be of utmost importance to US national security, Pompeo said. Taiwan is a principal US partner in technology and economic matters, and if China were to capture Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, it would severely hamper the US economy, Pompeo said. Should China occupy Taiwan, it would severely weaken US influence in the Indo-Pacific region and its surrounding areas,
Opening-day ticket sales for a horror exhibition at the Tainan Art Museum were suspended twice on Saturday as the show attracted too many visitors. Titled “Ghosts and Hells: The Underworld in Asian art,” the exhibition runs until Oct. 16. It is the local version of a show that debuted at the Musee du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. It was planned and curated by Julien Rousseau. The Tainan museum said that within an hour of its doors opening, more than 1,000 people had entered the exhibition. By noon, 3,000 physical and virtual tickets had been sold, while the museum had more than 4,000
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