Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/03/28
By: Yang Shu-min and S.C. Chang
Taipei, March 28 (CNA) Taiwan’s Fisheries Agency issued an official report Monday on a
The two fishing boats arrive in Singapore March 24.
shooting incident involving Taiwanese fishing boats and Indonesian government vessels, saying that the latter caused 17 bullet impacts on the cabin of a Taiwanese fishing boat without warning in the early hours of March 21 in the Strait of Malacca.
In its first official report on the incident, the agency’s director-general, Tsay Tzu-yaw (蔡日耀), cited the Sheng Te Tsai’s voyage data recorders (VDR) as saying that it was sailing at a speed of seven to eight knots — at which speed it was unlikely to be setting nets and fishing.
The fact that both the Sheng Te Tsai and the Lien I Hsing No. 116 had been sailing at that speed between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. pokes a hole in an Indonesian government claim that the Taiwanese fishing boats were poaching in its territorial waters, Tsay said.
He also quoted the two captains as vowing that neither of them had tried to ram their ships into the Indonesian patrol boats, as had been claimed by the Indonesians.
Agency officials who investigated the two boats found a total of 17 bullet holes and scars, nine of which were outside the cabin, four were outside of the crew’s sleeping area, two were inside the cabin, one in the rescue raft and one on the funnel, according to Tsai. [FULL STORY]
