The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) and the Republic of China (ROC) Navy are to hold a joint drill focusing on humanitarian rescue missions in the South China Sea at the end of this month, sources said.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has instructed that Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島) — the largest of the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) and controlled by Taiwan — should be turned into a center for humanitarian rescue and a supply base to counter a ruling by an international court in July that Itu Aba is a “rock.”
The drill will demonstrate the progress being made in efforts to turn Itu Aba into a humanitarian rescue center, sources said.
The coast guard and navy will also conduct joint operations to protect Taiwanese fishing vessels and improve anti-terrorism capability at sea to guarantee the safety of fishermen, they said.
The government selected this month to hold the joint drill as it marks the 70th anniversary of the ROC taking control of Itu Aba from Japan, the sources said.
On Nov. 24, 1946, the ROC government sent four military vessels that arrived in the South China Sea at the end of that month and in early December. The ROC took over Itu Aba on Dec. 12.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in July ruled that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights over resources in the South China Sea falling within Beijing’s “nine-dash line” and that all high-tide features in the Spratlys, including Itu Aba, are legally “rocks.”
In the case brought by the Philippines against China, the court said there was no evidence that China had historically exercised exclusive control over the waters or resources of islands in the South China Sea.
The Philippines said that the land formations claimed by Beijing in the South China Sea are not islands and therefore do not have an exclusive economic zone.
China’s “nine-dash line” territorial claim over the South China Sea is unlawful under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Philippines said.
While Taiwan was not a party to the case, its claims in the South China Sea are similar to those of China and Itu Aba was mentioned in testimony at the court hearings.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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