Japan said yesterday it lodged a protest with China after Hong Kong-based activists attempted to sail to islands disputed over by Japan, China and Taiwan.
The activists entered the contested area on Sunday flying a Chinese flag and a banner claiming sovereignty over the uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, known as the Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese.
"It is a serious problem that they infringed on our nation's sovereignty, even for a short period of time," chief government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura told a news conference.
PHOTO: AP
"There is no doubt historically and under international law that the Senkaku islands are Japan's sovereign territory. No territorial dispute exists between the two countries," he said.
The Japan Coast Guard dispatched patrol ships as well as an aircraft to chase away the activists, who never reached the islands but reportedly spent more than an hour in what Japan considers its waters, coast guard officials said.
The coast guard said it gave up the chase after the vessel turned direction.
The foreign ministry said it delivered a protest to the Chinese embassy in Tokyo late on Sunday.
In response, "the Chinese side repeated its own position on the territorial dispute and rejected our protest, while requesting that the Japanese side deal with the matter calmly," a Japanese foreign ministry statement said.
Japan and China have a series of territorial disputes, including over lucrative gas resources in the East China Sea.
Japan claimed the islands in 1895 when it took over Taiwan.
The US seized the islands in World War II and returned them to Japan in 1972 along with Okinawa, despite protests from China and Taiwan.
China also continues to claim that Taiwan and its islands are part of its territory.
In March 2004, seven Chinese activists managed to land on the islands. They were arrested and deported, causing a diplomatic row with Beijing.
CALIBRATED RESPONSE: The city-state has learned from its past experiences of dealing with COVID-19 variants to assess the situation and the risks, the transport minister said Singapore will strive to keep its borders open and stay connected to the rest of world even if a new variant of COVID-19 emerges, Singaporean Minister for Transport S. Iswaran said on Wednesday. The city-state has learned from its past experiences of dealing with COVID-19 variants, Iswaran said in an interview with Bloomberg News. When the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 hit, Singapore did not backtrack on its reopening plans, but rather decided to wait and see how things panned out, he said, adding that the response was different versus the Delta outbreak. “We’ve all learned to adapt,” Iswaran said on the sidelines
‘EATING UP SPRING’: Temperatures are 10oC to 15oC above the seasonal average and a city northwest of Madrid experienced its first ‘tropical’ May night on Friday Parts of Spain are experiencing their hottest May since records began, as a mass of hot, dry air blows in from Africa, bringing with it dusty skies and temperatures of more than 40°C. Spain’s state meteorological agency, Aemet, has warned of a weekend heat wave of an “extraordinary intensity,” with temperatures between 10°C and 15°C above the seasonal average and more akin to high summer than mid-May. “The early hours of 21 May have been extraordinarily hot for the time of year across a good part of the center and south of the peninsula,” Aemet said on Saturday. “In many places the
BUSINESS AS USUAL: Thousands of people were forcibly removed from their homes in the dead of night and all mentions of the incident were scrubbed from the Internet Thousands of COVID-19-negative Beijing residents were forcibly relocated to quarantine hotels overnight due to a handful of infections, as the Chinese capital begins to take more extreme control measures resembling virus-hit Shanghai. Beijing has been battling its worst outbreak since the COVID-19 pandemic started. The Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 has infected more than 1,300 since late last month, leading city restaurants, schools and tourist attractions to be closed indefinitely. China’s strategy to achieve zero COVID-19 cases includes strict border closures, lengthy quarantines, mass testing and rapid, targeted lockdowns. More than 13,000 residents of the locked-down Nanxinyuan residential compound in southeast Beijing were
‘I’M STUNNED’: The disease is not known to be sexually transmitted, but a large outbreak might reveal previously unknown transmission routes, a virologist said Scientists who have monitored numerous outbreaks of monkeypox in Africa say they are baffled by the disease’s recent spread in Europe and North America. Cases of the smallpox-related disease have previously been seen only among people with links to central and West Africa. However, in the past week, Britain, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the US, Sweden, Canada all reported infections, mostly in young men who had not previously traveled to Africa. There are about 80 confirmed cases worldwide and 50 more suspected ones, the WHO said. France, Germany, Belgium and Australia reported their first cases on Friday. “I’m stunned by this. Every day I
RSS