President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has published an op-ed article in the Washington Times harshly criticizing former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) for saying the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) belong to Japan, where they are known as the Senkaku Islands.
“Former or future presidents should not be cavalier about, or forsake, our national sovereignty,” Ma said.
The article was almost immediately attacked by Gerrit van der Wees, a senior policy adviser to the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, who called it “flabbergasting.”
“It seems President Ma is making a big issue out of the matter, as his Chinese Nationalist [Party, KMT] is in deep decline and looks set to lose the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections,” Van der Wees said in a statement.
Other Washington-based Taiwan watchers said it was “highly unusual” for a sitting president to criticize a former president in a foreign newspaper.
During a visit to Japan last month, Lee, who is 92 years old and known as Taiwan’s “father of democracy,” said that “the Diaoyutai Islands belong to Japan and are not Taiwanese territory.”
In a lengthy rebuttal, Ma said that based on strong historical evidence and international law, Japan returned the Diaoyutai Islands to the Republic of China (ROC) in 1945.
He said that between 1722 and 1872, numerous official reports confirm that the Diaoyutai Islands were regularly used by Taiwanese fishermen and effectively patrolled by the Qing Dynasty.
Ma said that on April 17, 1895, the Qing government and Japan signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which stipulated “the island of Taiwan, together with all the islands appertaining or belonging to Taiwan” were ceded to Japan.
However, during World War II, the ROC declared war on Japan and abrogated the Treaty of Shimonoseki.
Ma said that under the 1943 Cairo Declaration “all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese … shall be restored to the ROC.”
In 1945, the Potsdam Proclamation, the provisions of which Japan accepted, confirmed the Cairo Declaration.
The 1951 Treaty of San Francisco stated that Japan renounced sovereignty over Taiwan and Penghu, and sovereignty over the Diaoyutai Islands was returned to the ROC in October 1945.
“Prior to the signing of the Okinawa Reversion Agreement in June 1971 between the US and Japan, the US notified the ROC that only administrative rights over the Diaoyutai Islands were being transferred to Japan — not sovereignty — and that the agreement had no effect on the ROC’s sovereignty claim,” Ma said.
He concluded: “It is my solemn duty to protect our sovereignty and fishing rights with regard to the Diaoyutai Islands.”
Van der Wees said that “by focusing on the emotional issue of sovereignty over the small group of rocks,” Ma is stoking nationalistic fervor to regain ground for the KMT.
“Ma’s arguments regrettably do not hold water — he attempts to marshal some anecdotal evidence that the islands at some point in time may have been under Chinese rule, but does not present any direct evidence that the islands were ever administered by any of the Chinese empires,” Van der Wees said.
He added that Ma neglected to mention that Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣中正) government — as well as the Chinese government — only started to lay claim to the islands after 1971, when reports surfaced that there might be oil deposits near them.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
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
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
‘MALIGN PURPOSE’: Governments around the world conduct espionage operations, but China’s is different, as its ultimate goal is annexation, a think tank head said Taiwan is facing a growing existential threat from its own people spying for China, experts said, as the government seeks to toughen measures to stop Beijing’s infiltration efforts and deter Taiwanese turncoats. While Beijing and Taipei have been spying on each other for years, experts said that espionage posed a bigger threat to Taiwan due to the risk of a Chinese attack. Taiwan’s intelligence agency said China used “diverse channels and tactics” to infiltrate the nation’s military, government agencies and pro-China organizations. The main targets were retired and active members of the military, persuaded by money, blackmail or pro-China ideology to steal
RSS