President-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday reiterated the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) stance that Taiwan has sovereignty over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), known as the Senkakus in Japan, following former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) assertion in his new book that “the Diaoyutais do not belong to Taiwan.”
“The DPP’s stance has always been clear: The Diaoyutais belong to Taiwan,” Tsai said on the sidelines of a conference held for DPP lawmakers to prepare them for the upcoming legislative session.
Tsai was responding to a section in Lee’s latest book, Last Days: My Life’s Journey and the Roadmap of Taiwan’s Democratization, in which he writes that although fishermen from both Taiwan and Japan have traditionally fished in the waters surrounding the islands, “the Diaoyutais do not belong to Taiwan.”
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
Along with Okinawa, the islands were returned to Japan in 1972 when US occupation ended, Lee wrote.
He said that in 1972, when studying for his doctorate at Harvard University, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was the first person to claim that the Republic of China (ROC) had sovereignty over the Diaoyutais.
“When the DPP came to power in 2000, the third premier of the DPP administration, Yu Shyi-kun, who belonged to [former] president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) faction, placed the Diaoyutais under the jurisdiction of Toucheng Township (頭城) in his native Yilan County,” Lee wrote. “There is nothing more foolish than this; not only the Chinese, but also the Taiwanese government is deceiving the people.”
Separately, Yu said on Facebook that he was serving as a Taiwan provincial councilor in the early 1980s the first time he heard the statement that the “Diaoyutai Islands are the territory of the ROC,” and that it was Lee himself who told him, in his then-role as a provincial governor.
“Also, the Diaoyutais were placed under the jurisdiction of Yilan County in 1973, not during my term as premier,” Yu said.
At the conference, Tsai again reminded all DPP lawmakers to bear in mind the people’s expectations of the party, to stick to the party’s policy platforms raised during the presidential and legislative campaigns and to work hard to monitor the government before the presidential inauguration on May 20.
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