KINMEN, Taiwan: Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te visited an island off China on Friday for the 75th anniversary of a victory over communist forces, days after China and Taiwan held military drills in sensitive waters separating the two.
Lai’s trip to the Kinmen islands, a few kilometers from the Chinese mainland, follows a fortnight of intense military activity in the Taiwan Strait.
Lai, who took power in May and has been more outspoken than his predecessor in defending Taiwan’s sovereignty, attended a somber ceremony for the Battle of Guningtou and shook hands with veterans.
China’s Communist Party has never ruled democratic Taiwan, but Beijing claims the island as part of its territory and has said it will never renounce the use of force to bring it under its control.
The dispute between Beijing and Taipei dates back to a civil war between Mao Zedong’s communist fighters and Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist forces, which fled to Taiwan in 1949 following their defeat.
The nationalists scored a key victory over the communists in the Battle of Guningtou on the Kinmen islands, which Taiwan still controls along with the Matsu islands next to China.
China has ramped up military and political pressure on Taiwan in recent years as it seeks to browbeat Taipei into accepting its claims of sovereignty over the islands.
Beijing’s large-scale war games around Taiwan on October 14 were followed by live-fire drills near the island on Tuesday, and the transiting of a Chinese aircraft carrier group through the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday.
Taiwanese troops conducted live-fire drills on Penghu island in the waterway on Thursday, days after a US and a Canadian warship sailed through the narrow passage.
Taiwan president visits island off China for battle anniversary
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Taiwan president visits island off China for battle anniversary
- Lai Ching-te’s trip to the Kinmen islands follows a fortnight of intense military activity in the Taiwan Strait
- China’s Communist Party has never ruled democratic Taiwan, but Beijing claims the island as part of its territory
Sri Lanka hospital releases 22 rescued Iranian sailors
- Sri Lankan authorities said the survivors from the Dena were being handled according to international humanitarian law
COLOMBO: Sri Lanka discharged from hospital 22 Iranian sailors who were plucked from life rafts after their warship was sunk by a US submarine, officials said Sunday.
The sailors were treated at Karapitiya Hospital in the southern port city of Galle since Wednesday after the IRIS Dena was torpedoed just outside Sri Lanka’s territorial waters.
“Another 10 are still undergoing treatment,” a medical officer at the hospital told AFP.
He said the bodies of 84 Iranians retrieved from the Indian Ocean were also at the hospital.
Those discharged from hospital overnight had been taken to a beach resort in the same district.
Sri Lankan authorities said the survivors from the Dena were being handled according to international humanitarian law, and the government had contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross for assistance.
The island is also providing safe haven for another 219 Iranian sailors from a second ship, the IRIS Bushehr, that was allowed to berth a day after the Dena was sunk.
Sailors from the Bushehr have been moved to a Sri Lanka Navy camp at Welisara, just north of the capital Colombo, and their ship taken over by Sri Lanka’s navy.
Sri Lanka announced it was taking the Bushehr to the north-eastern port of Trincomalee, but an engine failure and other technical and administrative issues had delayed the movement, a navy spokesman said.
Sri Lanka has denied claims that it was under pressure from Washington not to allow the Iranians to return home, and said Colombo will be guided solely by international law and its own domestic legislation.
A US State Department spokesperson said the disposition of the Bushehr crew and Iranian sailors rescued at sea was up to Sri Lanka.
“The United States, of course, respects and recognizes Sri Lanka’s sovereignty in the handling of this situation,” the spokesperson told AFP in Washington.
India, meanwhile, said Saturday that it had allowed a third Iranian warship, the IRIS Lavan, to dock in one of its ports on “humane” grounds after it too reported engine problems.
The three ships were part of a multi-national fleet review held by India before the war in the Middle East started last week.
“I think it was the humane thing to do, and I think we were guided by that principle,” Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Saturday.
The Lavan docked in the south-west Indian port of Kochi on Wednesday.
“A lot of the people on board were young cadets. They have disembarked and are in a nearby facility,” Jaishankar said.
