Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) arrived in Japan yesterday for a week-long stay.
The visit is the fifth by Japan-educated Lee, 86, since he stepped down as president nine years ago. During his 1988 to 2000 term, he nurtured democracy and tried to promote a separate identity for Taiwan.
Each of Lee’s Japan trips has triggered protests from China, which sees them as attempts to strengthen Taiwan’s status, although the complaints have grown less vehement.
PHOTO: AP/KYODO NEWS
Japan does not require visas for Taiwanese tourists and Lee has said the visit is private.
Lee, wearing a grey suit, arrived at Narita Airport near Tokyo accompanied by his wife and was heavily guarded by security officers.
He was greeted by a small group of supporters waving the flags of Japan and Taiwan.
Lee plans to deliver a speech in Tokyo on Japanese society today. He is then scheduled to fly to Kochi and Kumamoto in southern Japan to deepen ties with business groups before heading back to Taiwan on Thursday.
On a visit to Japan last year, Lee said that an island group disputed between Japan, Taiwan and China was “a territory of Japan.”
The archipelago in the East China Sea is known in Japan as the Senkaku Islands and as the Diaoyutai (釣魚台) Islands in Taiwan.
“The land of the Senkaku Islands belongs to Okinawa, therefore it is a territory of Japan,” Lee said in an interview carried in the Okinawa Times in southern Japan.
During a visit in 2007, Lee mourned his late brother at Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni war shrine.
The Shinto shrine venerates those who died in wars while fighting for Japan, including convicted war criminals from World War II.
Lee’s elder brother is enshrined at Yasukuni because he died serving in the Japanese navy in the Philippines in February 1945 when Taiwan was a Japanese colony.
SEND A MESSAGE: Sinking the amphibious assault ship, the lead warship of its class, is meant to show China the US Navy is capable of sinking their ships, an analyst said The US and allied navies plan to sink a 40,000-tonne ship at the latest Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise to simulate defeating a Chinese amphibious assault on Taiwan. This year’s RIMPAC — the 29th iteration of the world’s largest naval exercise — involves the US, 28 partners, more than 25,000 personnel, 40 warships, three submarines and more than 150 aircraft operating in and around Hawaii from yesterday to Aug. 1, the US Navy said in a press release. The major components of the event include multidomain warfare exercises in multiship surface engagements, anti-submarine warfare and multi-axis defense of a carrier strike
Taiwanese could risk being extradited to China when traveling in countries with close ties to Beijing, Taiwan Association of University Professors deputy chairman Chen Li-fu (陳俐甫) said on Friday. Chen’s comments came after China on Friday last week announced new judicial guidelines targeting Taiwanese independence advocates. Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Djibouti are among the countries where Taiwanese could risk being extradited to China, he said. The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Thursday elevated the travel alert for China, Hong Kong and Macau to “orange” after Beijing announced its guidelines to “severely punish Taiwanese independence diehards for splitting the country and inciting secession.” Extradition treaties
The airspace around Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) is to be closed for an hour on July 25 and July 23 respectively, due to the Han Kuang military exercises, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday. The annual exercise is to be held on Taiwan proper and its outlying islands from July 22 to 26. During last year’s exercise, the military conducted anti-aircraft landing drills at the Taoyuan airport for the first time, for which a one-hour no-fly ban was issued. Based on a live-fire bulletin sent out by the Maritime and Port Bureau, the nation’s
CROSS-BORDER CRIME: The suspects cannot be charged with cybercrime in Indonesia as their targets were in Malaysia, an Indonesian immigration director said Indonesian immigration authorities have detained 103 Taiwanese after a raid at a villa on Bali, officials said yesterday. They were accused of misusing their visas and residence permits, and are suspected of possible cybercrimes, Safar Muhammad Godam, director of immigration supervision and enforcement at the Indonesian Ministry of Law and Human Rights told reporters at a news conference. “The 103 foreign nationals stayed at the villa and conducted suspicious activities, which we suspect are activities related to cybercrime activities,” he said, presenting laptops and routers at the news conference. Godam said Indonesian authorities cannot charge them with conducting cybercrime. “During the inspection, we