The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said that a mechanism has been established to facilitate interdepartmental efforts to allow the detention of ships suspected of engaging in acts of sabotage in coastal waters.
The introduction of the new procedure followed an incident at sea earlier this month, when Chunghwa Telecom reported that one of its major undersea fiberoptic cables had allegedly been damaged by a vessel off Keelung.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
At a legislative hearing yesterday, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lin Chu-yin (林楚茵) said that the Cameroon-flagged Shunxing-39 cargo ship, which is Chinese-owned, had not been detained and had sailed to Busan, South Korea.
Consequently, Taiwan now has to use diplomatic channels and ask for South Korea’s assistance in investigating the Jan. 3 incident, Lin said.
During the hearing, Lin asked CGA Deputy Director-General Hsieh Ching-chin (謝慶欽) why the coast guard had not been able to detain the vessel in Keelung Harbor.
Hsieh said that the ship’s destination was Busan, and it did not have the necessary documents for docking in Keelung Harbor.
Furthermore, under the previous procedure, the CGA could only detain a foreign vessel if it was caught in the act of breaking the law, Hsieh said.
In the case of the damaged cable, CGA vessels arrived on the scene four hours after the company filed the report, he added.
Following the incident, an interdepartmental meeting was called, during which agencies agreed on a mechanism to deal with suspected acts of sabotage at sea, Hsieh said.
Under the new mechanism, prosecutors would launch a probe upon receiving information about suspected acts of sabotage on undersea cables, and notify the CGA and the Maritime and Port Bureau of the incident, Hsieh said.
The CGA and the bureau would then bring the suspected vessel back to a port and detain it, Hsieh said.
National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) at the hearing said that the bureau would work with the CGA to improve the reporting of ships engaged in “suspicious” activities in waters around Taiwan, especially of vessels that have a “flag of convenience,” or vessels that are registered in a country other than their own.
Furthermore, the National Security Bureau would help CGA personnel deal with different “gray zone” activities done by Chinese ships, such as by providing information through lectures, Tsai said.
Before attending the hearing, Tsai told reporters that his agency had made a request to Taiwan’s international allies for an exchange of information on China’s “gray zone” activities around Taiwan.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS