Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose country is embroiled in a row with China over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), which are also claimed by Taiwan and which Japan calls the Senkakus, yesterday quoted former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s reflections on the 1982 Falklands war with Argentina to stress the importance of the rule of law at sea.
“Our national interests have been immutable. They lie in making the seas, which are the foundation of our nation’s existence, completely open, free and peaceful,” Abe said in a prepared policy speech to parliament covering a wide range of issues.
Abe went on to quote a remark from Thatcher’s memoirs, reflecting on the Falklands war, in which she said Britain was defending the fundamental principle that international law should prevail over the use of force.
The war over the remote South Atlantic archipelago began when Argentine troops landed on the Falkland Islands on April 2, 1982, and ended 74 days later with their surrender. The conflict killed about 650 Argentine and 255 British troops.
Continuing in his own words, Abe said: “The rule of law at sea. I want to appeal to international society that in modern times, changes to the status quo by the use of force will justify nothing.”
Tokyo’s ties with Beijing chilled sharply after the Japanese government in September last year bought three of the rocky islands in the East China Sea, which are controlled by Japan, from a private owner, sparking violent protests in China.
A flare-up in tensions in the territorial row has raised fears of an unintended military incident near the islands. The US says the islets fall under a US-Japan security pact, but Washington is keen to avoid a clash in the economically vital region.
Abe, who assumed office in December after his conservative party’s big election win, reiterated in his speech that the islands are Japanese territory, and urged Beijing not to escalate tensions.
However, he added that Sino-Japanese relations were vital for Japan and said his door was always open to dialogue.
Abe also stressed the importance of the US-Japan security alliance days after his summit with US President Barack Obama.
Calling the US alliance the axis of Japan’s diplomacy and security policies, Abe said: “It is only logical that, in the open oceans, the US, which is the world’s largest marine state, and Japan, Asia’s largest maritime democracy, form a partnership, and to fortify this constantly is necessary.”
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
VIOLENCE: The teacher had depression and took a leave of absence, but returned to the school last year, South Korean media reported A teacher stabbed an eight-year-old student to death at an elementary school in South Korea on Monday, local media reported, citing authorities. The teacher, a woman in her 40s, confessed to the crime after police officers found her and the young girl with stab wounds at the elementary school in the central city of Daejeon on Monday evening, the Yonhap news agency reported. The girl was brought to hospital “in an unconscious state, but she later died,” the report read. The teacher had stab wounds on her neck and arm, which officials determined might have been self-inflicted, the news agency