The Japanese government has rejected Taiwan’s protests over its use of excessive force against a Taiwanese fishing boat suspected of fishing earlier this month in disputed waters, Representative to Japan Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) said yesterday.
The Tung Pan Chiu No. 28 on March 3 was chased off by Japanese patrol boats when it allegedly encroached and fished in an area where the two nations’ exclusive economic zones overlap.
It was driven away from that area again the next day by Japanese boats, which also attacked it with a water cannon.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
Hsieh told a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee that the Representative Office of Taiwan in Tokyo on March 5 lodged a protest with Japanese authorities.
The office protested Japan’s “excessive use of force,” which Tokyo, insisting that its actions were carried out according to the law, refused to acknowledge, he said.
The Japanese government provided photographs it took on March 3, which showed crew members on the Taiwanese boat catching fish and that there were two fish on the boat, Hsieh said.
Diplomacy should be carried out in good faith, Hsieh said, and since the office was unable to provide counterproof, it could only trust Japan’s claims.
The Japanese government said that the patrol boats on March 3 asked the Tung Pan Chiu No. 28 to stop and be inspected, but it fled, Hsieh said.
The next day, the boat was against spotted operating near the disputed zone, he added.
Citing an investigation by the Fisheries Agency, Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said that the fishing boat on March 4 did not cross a tentative boundary delimited by the two sides, but the Japanese ships crossed the line when they were chasing the fishing boat.
Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries should have informed the Taiwanese government before it started chasing the boat, to avoid affecting the nations’ friendship, he said.
Japan lacks hard evidence that the fishing boat had breached any agreements between the two nations before it chased and attacked the vessel, Wu added.
The government would assert its rights as it continues its efforts to resolve the dispute with Japan and work out fishing rights in an area south of Japan’s Yaeyama and Miyako islands, where the two nations’ exclusive economic rights overlap, Wu said.
Taiwan-Japan Relations Association Secretary-General Chang Shu-ling (張淑玲) — who headed the latest rounds of bilateral fishing talks that concluded in Taipei on Saturday last week — said that although the two sides’ stance on fishing rights in the disputed maritime zone does not align, the association “made known [the nation’s] stance” on the matter.
The association would continue negotiating with Japan over Taiwanese fishing rights in the zone in future fisheries talks and Taiwan-Japan Maritime Affairs Collaboration Dialogue meetings, she said.
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