Authorities on both sides of the Taiwan Strait yesterday said that a settlement had been reached regarding two Chinese men who died while being chased by a Coast Guard Administration (CGA) vessel in waters off Kinmen County five months ago.
“We will implement the agreement,” CGA Deputy Director-General Hsieh Ching-Chin (謝慶欽) told reporters after a one-hour negotiation held at Golden Lake Hotel in Kinmen.
However, Hsieh said the CGA was “currently unable to disclose” the details of the deal, “out of respect for the families involved and [due to] the consensus reached in the cross-strait agreement.”
Photo courtesy of the Coast Guard Administration
Quanzhou City Taiwan Affairs Office Deputy Director Li Zhaohui (李朝暉), the Chinese representative in the negotiations, confirmed that an agreement had been reached.
He said that he hoped the “relevant parties in Taiwan” would honor the agreement.
The incident occurred on Feb. 14 when coast guard personnel pursued a Chinese vessel that had entered prohibited waters off Kinmen.
The unnamed and unregistered Chinese boat fled after refusing a coast guard patrol vessel’s request to board it, resulting in a chase that ended when the boat collided with the CGA vessel and capsized, resulting in the deaths of two Chinese crew members, the CGA said.
The other two Chinese on the boat who survived returned to China on Feb. 20, while the bodies of the deceased and the boat remained in Kinmen for investigation.
The incident raised tensions around Kinmen, which is less than 10km from Xiamen, China.
Officials representing the two sides held several rounds of talks in February and March, but failed to reach an agreement, including how to compensate the families of the deceased.
After attending a public memorial service in Kinmen yesterday, CGA Director-General Chang Chung-lung (張忠龍) again apologized for the failure of coast guard personnel to record evidence during the incident and for the suffering endured by the families of the deceased.
Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung and Taoyuan would issue a decision at 8pm on whether to cancel work and school tomorrow due to forecasted heavy rain, Keelung Mayor Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) said today. Hsieh told reporters that absent some pressing reason, the four northern cities would announce the decision jointly at 8pm. Keelung is expected to receive between 300mm and 490mm of rain in the period from 2pm today through 2pm tomorrow, Central Weather Administration data showed. Keelung City Government regulations stipulate that school and work can be canceled if rain totals in mountainous or low-elevation areas are forecast to exceed 350mm in
EVA Airways president Sun Chia-ming (孫嘉明) and other senior executives yesterday bowed in apology over the death of a flight attendant, saying the company has begun improving its health-reporting, review and work coordination mechanisms. “We promise to handle this matter with the utmost responsibility to ensure safer and healthier working conditions for all EVA Air employees,” Sun said. The flight attendant, a woman surnamed Sun (孫), died on Friday last week of undisclosed causes shortly after returning from a work assignment in Milan, Italy, the airline said. Chinese-language media reported that the woman fell ill working on a Taipei-to-Milan flight on Sept. 22
COUNTERMEASURE: Taiwan was to implement controls for 47 tech products bound for South Africa after the latter downgraded and renamed Taipei’s ‘de facto’ offices The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is still reviewing a new agreement proposed by the South African government last month to regulate the status of reciprocal representative offices, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. Asked about the latest developments in a year-long controversy over Taiwan’s de facto representative office in South Africa, Lin during a legislative session said that the ministry was consulting with legal experts on the proposed new agreement. While the new proposal offers Taiwan greater flexibility, the ministry does not find it acceptable, Lin said without elaborating. The ministry is still open to resuming retaliatory measures against South
1.4nm WAFERS: While TSMC is gearing up to expand its overseas production, it would also continue to invest in Taiwan, company chairman and CEO C.C. Wei said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has applied for permission to construct a new plant in the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區), which it would use for the production of new high-speed wafers, the National Science and Technology Council said yesterday. The council, which supervises three major science parks in Taiwan, confirmed that the Central Taiwan Science Park Bureau had received an application on Friday from TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, to commence work on the new A14 fab. A14 technology, a 1.4 nanometer (nm) process, is designed to drive artificial intelligence transformation by enabling faster computing and greater power
RSS