Irritated Bellow Syndrome: Taiwan fisherman killed by Philippine Coast Guard, Media Feeding Frenzy Ensues

A couple of herons contemplate eastern Taichung, and are not impressed.

Unless you've been living in a cave or a foreign country, it's been impossible to miss the unseemly mess over the death of a Taiwanese fisherman at the hands of Philippines Coast Guard sailors. Let's roll that news:

(A Taipei Times report)

A total of 52 bullet holes were found on the Kuang Ta Hsing No. 28, Liu Chia-kai (劉嘉凱) from the Pingtung District Prosecutors’ Office, said after examining the 15-tonne vessel that is registered in Liouciou Township (琉球), Pingtung County.

Investigators found 10 holes on the port side, where the bullets penetrated parts of the boat that are quite thick. This means they may have been fired from “heavy weapons,” such as machine guns, Liu said.

..............

Taiwanese fisherman Hung Shih-cheng (洪石成), 65, was killed when the Philippine Coast Guard vessel opened fire in the incident on Thursday.

Prosecutors said Hung was killed by a bullet that penetrated the right side of his neck. Liu has asked that Hung’s body be taken to Kaohsiung for forensic examination.

My man Ben observes:

Neither too did this tragedy just happen absent any historical trend.  Conflicts between Taiwanese boats and Filipino fishing boats and the Philippines Coast Guard have been escalating in this same area for a number of years, most usually around the time of the tuna fishing season.

Watchers of the region will also have noted that the Philippines got a very figuratively bloody nose last year when the Chinese, using fishing boats which were then augmented by ‘Maritime Surveillance’ vessels and PLAN ships, literally invaded and occupied the Scarborough Shoal effectively annexing the area that is roughly 220km from the Filipino mainland.  This timeline shows that the spat between China and the Philippines over the Scarborough Shoal has a long history. It could be then that the PCG personnel on board the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) vessel that confronted Hung’s boat were over zealous, keen not to be embarrassed again.  This fatal incident, deriving from an almost annual showdown over access to valuable catch, might then be seen as an act of aggression displacement.  Not being able to displace the Chinese from their waters, they may have projected that frustration onto Taiwanese boats instead.  The difference in these incidents is that Scarborough Shoal is much closer to the Filipino mainland than the area in which the Hung shooting took place.  There is therefore lots of room for interpretation of whether the BFAR vessel had any authority to act in the area.  

As usual, with international incidents of this nature, there are multiple competing accounts of what happened and where.  Largely absent in the Taiwanese media is the claim by the PCG that Hung’s boat was one of four that were accosted and which refused to leave.  Also absent is their claim that Hung rammed his boat repeatedly into the BFAR vessel.   It boggles the mind, given all the brinkmanship by fishermen, Coast Guard and pseudo-naval vessels in the South and East China Seas in the last three years, that someone was not recording events on camera for evidence in this incident.  The Philippines certainly did not help their case when they initially denied being the area and then admitted firing on the craft.  That does not lend an air of credibility to their version of events but since there seems to be no video (or none made available to the media) the confrontation remains at the level of ‘he said, she said’.  

Ben's observations are spot on and his post should be read in its entirety. The mess has been escalated by our Golden Retriever media in Taiwan, which adopts the attitude of China (several locals I spoke to made this comparison) and seldom criticizes the actions of Taiwan abroad. I doubt many Taiwanese are really aware of the way Taiwanese fishing boats plunder the waters of other nations (I reviewed their behavior last year in this long post). Ben notes that this context is vital to understanding this incident... For example: "gang-rape of tuna" in Philippines waters shows how large the stakes are....

“Let us say there are eight fishing vessels that regularly poach in the waters of Aurora province daily from January to July, that means a total haul of 27,000 tons of tuna per factory ship during the period or 216,000 metric tons of tuna for all eight fishing vessels regardless if they are Japanese, Korean or Taiwanese," Hicap said.

According to Pamalakaya’s computation, the owners of the eight fishing vessels could have earned as much as $ 1.274 billion, or $160 million per fishing vessel, in just six months from tuna poaching in Aurora and other tuna-rich waters of the Philippines.

Such poaching also has another negative effect on Philippines: Taiwan longliners dump their hauls in local markets in the Philippines, driving down prices and hurting local producers, according to this paper.

In any case, President Ma Ying-jeou delivered an inevitable ultimatum to the Philippines government, politically necessary since the local press was in a typical frenzy...

The administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday gave the Philippines 72 hours to arrest those responsible for the death of a Taiwanese fisherman, issue a formal apology and compensate the victim’s family.

If Manila failed to respond to these demands within 72 hours, the government will freeze Philippine worker applications, recall the Republic of China (ROC) representative in Manila and ask the Philippine representative to return to Manila to help in the investigation, Presidential Office spokesperson Lee Chia-fei (李佳霏) told a news conference last night following a national security meeting presided over by Ma.

Since Taipei can seriously hurt Manila by denying applications for workers (and it has done that before, in 2011 over the deportation incident -- see below), it seems likely Manila will bow to the inevitable. The President did provide one moment of crass comedy when he asked for ten seconds of silence on behalf of the dead Taiwanese fisherman and then counted down the seconds out loud.

China jumped into the dispute, issuing condemnation of Philippines, the "most barbaric" country in the South China Sea. LOL. But this move highlights how, though there is no evidence for overt cooperation between Beijing and Taipei in fostering Chinese territorial expansion, situations like this give Beijing the opportunity to push such claims and to further prop up its claim to Taiwan, and give the appearance of cooperation between Taipei and Beijing, an important propaganda goal of Beijing. This propaganda campaign, as J Michael observes, is then picked up by local critics of Ma as if it were real, further helping Beijing.

Some of you might recall the 2011 flap over the deportation of Taiwanese fraudsters from Philippines to China (long post with many links). In that incident, Taipei put into place a go-slow on worker applications. Manila-Taipei relations, as that post noted, are not in good shape despite the economic links between the two nations.

RELATED:

• China's escalating claims on its neighbors, from Heritage
• Long piece on the history and growth of Taiwan's tuna fishing, but no mention of conflicts with other nations.

_______________________
[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!