Gary Sands
April 5, 2016
When Vasco da Gama, the famous Portuguese explorer, landed on the west coast of India in 1498, his armed galleons intercepted foreign vessels and confiscated their goods, justifying their actions by arguing the “common right to all to navigate the seas. . . does not extend outside Europe.â€
More than five hundred years later, the Chinese appear to be taking a similar approach to foreign fishing vessels they deem to be infringing upon their territory—namely, 90 percent of the South China Sea they claim under their nine-dash line, or infamous “cow’s tongue.†In recent months, Chinese coast guard vessels and fishing boats seem to have stepped up their presence in waters also claimed by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.
Last week, a Chinese coast guard vessel came to the rescue of the Chinese fishing boat caught fishing in Indonesian waters. While the Chinese fishing boat was being towed away by an Indonesian patrol vessel, the Chinese coast guard boat rammed the Chinese fishing boat, prying it free and then boarding it. On March 6, eleven Chinese men claiming to be from the Chinese coast guard boarded a Vietnamese fishing boat trawling the waters off the Paracel Islands. The eleven Chinese then proceeded to smash communication devices and fishing equipment, confiscating all their food, oil, fishing gear and their catch, even dumping fish into their drinking water containers. Indeed, last year there were some twenty attacks by Chinese boats on Vietnamese fishing boats in the Paracel Island chain alone. Some took place during China’s annual May-to-August fishing ban, ostensibly enforced to protect against overfishing. Last week, Malaysia reported over one hundred Chinese fishing boats, guarded by two Chinese coast guard vessels, had entered their waters near the Luconia Shoal.
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