Coast guard personnel on Sunday arrested a Chinese man who drove a motorboat into a harbor at the mouth of a river leading into Taipei, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday.
The suspicious vessel was monitored after being spotted at about 11am on Sunday, 6 nautical miles (11km) off the coast of Tamsui District (淡水), the CGA said.
After entering the Tamsui River, which leads to downtown Taipei, the boat collided with other vessels at a ferry terminal, the CGA said.
Photo courtesy of the Coast Guard Administration via CNA
The CGA’s Third Patrol Command dispatched officers to apprehend the man and seized his Chinese-registered boat, a source said, asking not to be named.
The man was arrested on suspicion of contravening 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) and the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法), the CGA said, adding that he was transferred to the Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office for questioning.
The man is a 60-year-old surnamed Ruan (阮), who said he wanted to defect to the Republic of China, sources said.
Photo couresy of the Coast Guard Administration via CNA
He said left the Port of Ningde in China’s Fujian Province on Saturday morning, but no food or drink was found on the boat and Ruan did not appear to have a tan, the sources said.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not answer calls seeking comment yesterday, which was a holiday in China and Taiwan.
In March, two Taiwanese fishers strayed into Chinese waters near Kinmen County. One was a Taiwanese military officer and remains in detention in China, while the other was released soon afterward.
During the height of the Cold War, people from both sides of the Taiwan Strait would, on occasion, cross to the other side seeking to defect, but such events are now rare.
Additional reporting by CNA
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
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 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
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