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.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas