The EU is closely following incidents involving undersea cables around Taiwan allegedly being damaged by vessels linked to China and condemns attacks targeting such infrastructure, an EU spokesperson said yesterday.
“We strongly condemn any deliberate destruction of critical infrastructure — be it in Asia, Europe or elsewhere,” the spokesperson said on condition of anonymity when replying to questions posed by the Central News Agency.
“We will continue to work together with like-minded partners around the globe to counter such activities,” the spokesperson said, adding that “the very interconnections that bring us together, like submarine data cables, have become targets — from the Baltic Sea to the Taiwan Strait.”
Photo: Screen grab from TeleGeography
A Togolese Republic-registered vessel and its Chinese crew were detained on Tuesday after a submarine communications cable linking Taiwan proper and Penghu County was severed.
The Coast Guard Administration said that it suspected the incident was an example of the “gray zone” techniques China adopts against Taiwan, while Chunghwa Telecom, which operates the cable, said the incident did not affect its customers.
The Tainan District Court on Thursday granted prosecutors’ motion to detain the Chinese captain of the vessel for further investigation.
Asked if the suspected sabotage of Taiwan’s undersea cable highlighted the need for a global partnership to enhance cable resilience, the EU spokesperson said: “We plan to work more closely together with our partners and actively engage in ‘cable diplomacy.’”
EU Executive Vice President of the European Commission for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna Virkkunen on Friday last week presented in Helsinki a plan to strengthen the security and resilience of submarine cables, the spokesperson said.
What Virkkunen presented is “to collectively improve our capacity to prevent, detect, deter and respond to incidents affecting submarine critical infrastructure” through international and multinational institutions, the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that “the EU has a direct interest in the preservation of the status quo in the Taiwan Strait,” and the EU calls on “all parties to exercise restraint and avoid any actions that may further escalate tensions, which should be resolved through cross-strait dialogue.”
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
A BETRAYAL? It is none of the ministry’s business if those entertainers love China, but ‘you cannot agree to wipe out your own country,’ the MAC minister said Taiwanese entertainers in China would have their Taiwanese citizenship revoked if they are holding Chinese citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. Several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑) and Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜), earlier this month on their Weibo (微博) accounts shared a picture saying that Taiwan would be “returned” to China, with tags such as “Taiwan, Province of China” or “Adhere to the ‘one China’ principle.” The MAC would investigate whether those Taiwanese entertainers have Chinese IDs and added that it would revoke their Taiwanese citizenship if they did, Chiu told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper
RSS