Taiwan News, Staff Writer
2008-12-26 03:48 PM
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Japanese prosecutors have decided not to indict the captain of the Taiwanese ship Lien Ho which was sunk by a Japanese coast guard frigate last June, touching off tension between the two neighbors, reports from Japan said Friday.
The incident happened on June 10 near the Diaoyutai Islands, known in Japan as Senkaku, uninhabited rocks the focus of a decades-old dispute between Taiwan, Japan and China.
The decision by prosecutors in Naha, Okinawa, not to press charges applied both to the Taiwanese captain, Ho Hung-yi, and the captain of the Japanese vessel, the Koshiki. After the incident, the two captains were referred to prosecutors for endangering shipping traffic. The Lien Ho’s three-man crew and 13 fishermen were rescued from the sinking ship by the Japanese coast guard after the sinking.
Ho was kept in custody for two days after the incident, touching off protests in Taiwan.
Naha prosecutors said Friday that both captains bore some responsibility, and the Japanese government had reached an agreement with Ho about the payment of about NT$10.5 million in compensation.
Ho said he was not satisfied with the sum, but would nevertheless still accept it because otherwise a legal process to get more would last too long. He said he bought the Lien Ho 12 years ago for NT$14 million, but rising fuel prices had sharply cut his ability to make a profit from fishing. Now that the ship had sunk, he could not work, Ho said.
The Japanese coast guard approached the Taiwanese ship inside a zone Japan considers as its territorial waters. The coast guard vessel was chasing the Lien Ho when it hit the Taiwanese ship, causing it to sink, Japanese prosecutors said.
After Ho returned home to Taipei County, a Japanese representative visited him to apologize for the incident.
The sinking of the Lien Ho caused severe tension between the two governments, with Defense Minister Chen Chao-min at one time threatening to lead a Taiwanese flotilla in the direction of the islands.
Over the years, activists from Taiwan and Hong Kong have several times tried to plant flags on the islands, which are in the middle of rich fishing grounds and widely believed to sit on top of oil and gas reserves.
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