The Coast Guard Administration on Friday denied a media report that it would send additional equipment and personnel to Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島) amid escalating tensions after a controversial court ruling on the islands in the South China Sea.
The administration described the report as “fabricated speculation” and urged media organizations to stop spreading groundless information and avoid fueling tensions that are detrimental to peaceful development in the region.
The report said the administration would yesterday send its frigate Taitung to Taiwan-controlled Itu Aba to relieve the frigate Wei Hsing, which has been stationed there since Sunday last week on a patrol mission to protect Taiwanese fishing boats operating there.
It added that the Taitung has been ordered to take equipment and personnel to Itu Aba for security purposes prior to a visit by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) this week.
The administration acknowledged that it was deploying the Taitung to the South China Sea and that it would relieve the Wei Hsing, but it dismissed the report’s contention that the ship would carry equipment and staff as “erroneous” and “unfounded.”
The administration said the Taitung was being sent to the area in response to the new situation in the South China Sea following Tuesday’s ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, the Netherlands, in a case the Philippines brought against China.
The court invalidated Beijing’s use of historic rights to claim much of the South China Sea’s islands and surrounding waters with a “nine-dash line.”
It also agreed with the Philippines’ agrument that Itu Aba — the largest island in the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) — is not an island and is therefore not entitled to a 200 nautical mile (370.4km) exclusive economic zone, nor are the other features around it, limiting China’s, and indirectly Taiwan’s, claims.
Tsai said the ruling seriously infringed Taiwan’s territorial claims and rights over islands in the South China Sea.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers urged Tsai to visit Itu Aba and assert Taiwan’s sovereignty, but Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang (黃重諺)said that there were no plans for Tsai to go there.
However, “such a possibility cannot be ruled out in the future,” he said.
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