Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday.
The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added.
The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No. 3 undersea cable linking Taiwan proper and Penghu County.
Photo courtesy of the Coast Guard Administration
The onshore signal station at the Port of Anping also broadcast seven times asking the vessel to leave the waters, but the ship did not respond, it said.
A patrol ship dispatched by the administration’s fourth offshore flotilla in Tainan arrived in the area at 2:30am yesterday and asked the Hong Tai to leave after discovering it was laying anchor, the administration said.
The Hong Tai began to move away at 3:08am, but it was stopped after Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) informed the administration at 3:24am that the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable appeared to have been sabotaged, the administration said.
While the ship’s exterior showed that its name was the Hong Tai 168, its automatic identification system showed Hong Tai 58, the administration said.
Because the coast guard was unable to conduct an onboard inspection due to poor weather, it asked the ship to berth at the Port of Anping to check the inconsistency, it said.
The Cijin. offshore patrol vessel and another patrol ship were also dispatched to the waters as backup, it added.
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) reported that Chinese crew on board at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter.
When the weather permitted, the coast guard boarded the Chinese freighter and ordered the crew to navigate toward the port, the report said, adding that the ship did not arrive at the port until 12:15pm.
The ship’s stern showed that its name is Shan Mei 7 (善美七號), it said.
A preliminary investigation showed that the ship was funded by Chinese investors, with all eight crew members on board being Chinese.
“We do not exclude the possibility that the ship’s move was part of China’s ‘gray zone’ harassment,” the Coast Guard Administration said, adding that it would fully cooperate with prosecutors to investigate whether the cable was damaged on purpose or by accident.
The damaged part of the cable is 14.7km off the coast of Tainan’s Beimen District (北門), based on a report received by the National Communications Commission and the Cyber Security Center at 3:03am yesterday.
Chunghwa Telecom has been asked to maintain communications between Taiwan proper and Penghu and Kinmen counties by switching from the damaged cable to the Taipei-Penghu No. 2 submarine cable, the Penghu-Kinmen No. 3 cable and the Taipei-Kinmen No. 2 cable, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said yesterday.
The telecom is to ask a cable repair ship to repair the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 cable after it has repaired the Taiwan-Matsu No. 2 and No. 3 cables, it said.
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