A coalition of pro-unification groups yesterday criticized the Japanese government for encroaching on Taiwanese fishing rights during a protest outside the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association’s Taipei office.
At 11am yesterday, about 30 protesters from the Concentric Patriotism Association (CPA), the Chung Hwa Baodiao Alliance, the Chinese Association of Friends of Okinawa (CAFO) and other groups gathered in front of the office on Qingcheng Street in the city’s Songshan District (松山), shouting “We want our fishing rights” and “Say no to Japanese invasion.”
Protesters attempted to throw eggs at the office, but were unable to approach, as it was surrounded by more than 100 police officers and protected with barricades.
Photo: Lu Yi-hsuan, Taipei Times
Japanese patrol boats on Saturday and Sunday harassed the Taiwanese fishing vessel Tung Pan Chiu No. 28 in waters near the disputed Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), allegedly because it crossed a designated zone for fishing activities stipulated by a 2013 Taiwan-Japan Fisheries Agreement.
“The Japanese Fisheries Agency is lying,” CAFO president Lien Shih-le (連石磊) said.
“As required by Fisheries Agency regulations, every Taiwanese fishing boat is equipped with a satellite monitoring system,” Lien said. “There is no way that a Taiwanese fishing boat would have gone beyond the exclusive economic zone.
“We are here to safeguard our fishing rights and the full sovereignty of our country,” he said. “We are sternly warning the Japanese government that we will never stop protesting until they stop encroaching upon our territory.”
Protesters also urged President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration to “toughen up” and take more actions to assert Taiwan’s fishing rights.
“If Tsai is unable to protect the Taiwanese, we should ask China’s People’s Liberation Army to protect us,” CPA head Zhou Qinjun (周慶峻) said.
One of the protesters waved a flag of the People’s Republic of China.
Police then escorted Lien, Zhou and several other protesters to the entrance of the building, where they handed an official letter of complaint to a representative from the Japanese office.
The groups moved their protest to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after the police ordered them to disperse at about 11:30am.
The protest came on the heels of an incident on Wednesday, when China Unification Promotion Party local chapter director Chen Ching-feng (陳清峰) tossed red paint at the association’s doorplate to protest Japan’s treatment of the Taiwanese fishing vessel.
Chen was later arrested for violating the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法) and the paint was soon removed.
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
RSS