Reclaiming the Diaoyu Islands: a volunteer's memoir

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, November 13, 2003

Reclaiming the Diaoyu Islands: a volunteer's memoir

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On October 9, 2003, Chinese volunteers from the mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong jointly sailed to the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea for the first time. They successfully reached the vicinity of the island. Yin Minhong was among the ten volunteers. On October 18, he told the story of his journey.

Yin, 25, was born in Qunfeng Township, Zhuzhou County, Hunan Province. He joined the army upon his graduation from a three-year course on traditional Chinese medicine and three years later, he retired and attended university. He was once auditor at Peking University. He has sailed twice as a volunteer to claim China's sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands. His first cruise happened in June 2003.

"Early on the morning of September 21, I received a phone call," Yin recalled, "it was from Zhang Likun, a friend of mine from Xiamen (a port city in southeastern Fujian Province). He was the commander-in-chief of our last journey to the Diaoyu Islands. He told me to arrive in Xiamen in five days time. I immediately knew we'll soon have another journey to the Diaoyu Islands though he didn't mention that on the phone."

"I set out on September 23 and arrived in Xiamen the next day. Originally we planned to begin our action secretly on September 28; however, the Japanese managed to learn about our tightly guarded plan before d-day. Several Japanese newspapers published stories about our planned action to defend the Diaoyu Islands. Consequently the Japanese Maritime Safety Agency deployed 30-40 warships aiming to intersect our possible cruise. Therefore we postponed our action for several days to avoid the mass Japanese fleet," Yin Said.

"At 15:10, October 7, ten of us, five from Hong Kong, one from Taiwan and four from the mainland, departed from Xiamen's Dongdu Fishing Harbor. We were in an iron-hull fishing boat named Minlongyu F861, which we rented from local fishermen. In addition, the captain and five sailors of the boat volunteered to be with us."

When asked if he felt a little bit afraid about what was going to happen next, Yin said: "I felt calm. I feared nothing but failure to land on the island."

On the evening of October 8 we heard of another four Taiwan and Hong Kong volunteers having embarked to meet us at sea. In the small hours of the 9th our boat passed Taiwan's Keelung Port and met their boat. Due to strong gales, our two boats weren't able to lie beside each other. Later four guys had to sail their boat back to Taiwan because the hull of their boat was made of glass fiber-reinforced plastic that was not strong enough to withstand the stormy waves on the way to the Diaoyu Islands. We were sorry about that. They were very eager to come aboard but that was just too dangerous. And none of us expected to see human injuries on that occasion.

Diaoyu Islands near at hand

"At noon on October 9 our boat was only 20 sea miles from the Diaoyu Islands. Many of us stepped up to the row one after another. Just at the moment, we found a Japanese warship and helicopter appeared and chased us. Later the warship sailed parallel with our boat and even displayed two scrolls with words of warnings on them. Dismissing their presence, we sailed on steadily to the Diaoyu Islands. We kept great restraint and sense to avoid head-on conflict with the Japanese warship," Yin said.

"But it's really burning humiliation to be warned and intervened by the Japanese on our own territorial waters! We gradually speeded forward and more Japanese warships and aircrafts gathered around and above us. Eventually eight Japanese warships, three helicopters and two warplanes besieged us. The Japanese warships sailed before the row of our boat in turns to prevent us from approaching the islands. The Japanese ships stirred billows and it would have been really disastrous if our boat had collided with theirs. On the other hand, the Japanese planes and helicopters performed hedgehop above us. Despite this our boat got nearer and nearer to the Diaoyu Islands and we even clearly saw the green trees on them. At last we were just about 200 meters from the islands!

"Seeing that we charged all out toward the islands, crews of the Japanese ships began to get so anxious that they dispatched two high-speed patrol boats, namely, DS-03 and DS-06, to converge on our boat. Meanwhile sirens screamed harshly from their planes and helicopters. The two patrol boats squeezed and bumped on our boat and we had to stop. We got very indignant and took eggs out of our food cabin and threw them at the uniformed Japanese guards wearing steel helmets. And we shouted to them: 'Japanese get out of the Diaoyu Islands!' I recorded the whole scene with a video camera," Yin recalled, full of pity and indignation.

Defending the Diaoyu Islands to the end

"During the two-hour confrontation the Japanese warships also discharged more than ten pneumatic boats to check our efforts to swim to the islands. Although we made every effort to break through the Japanese obstruction, we failed to land on the islands and even our plan to revolve round the islands was sabotaged by the Japanese fleet. At 17:20 we decided to go back," Yin said.

"To defend the Diaoyu Islands will be a long-term undertaking and we'll mobilize more people and ships for our future actions," he added.

Background: The Issue of the Diaoyu Islands

Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands lie in the East China Sea, around 92 nautical miles northeast of Chilung City, Taiwan Province, China. They cover a total area of 6.3 square km. Of all the islands, Diaoyu Island is the biggest with an area of about 4.3 square km.

In the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the Diaoyu Islands appeared in Chinese documents and were regarded as Chinese territory. The Japanese claimed to "discover" the islets only in the late 19th century, and named them Senkakus.

According to official Japanese maps published before 1895, the Diaoyu Islands were not represented.

The government of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki (Maguan) with Japan in 1895 after it lost the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 (launched by Japan to annex Korea and invade China). This was in effect until the end of World War II, when Japan surrendered to the Allies in 1945 and later accepted the Potsdam Declaration.

According to the Shimonoseki Treaty, Taiwan and all its adjacent islands, including the Diaoyu Islands, were ceded to Japan by the Qing government. Since then, Japan added the Diaoyu Islands to its maps published after 1895.

In 1945, the Japanese Government accepted the Potsdam Declaration, which stipulated that Japan must return all territories it seized from China. From then on, the Diaoyu Islands were deleted from Japanese maps.

Such a change actually meant that Japan returned the Diaoyu Islands to China. In 1971 the US government transferred the rights of administration over the islets to the Japanese, without, however, admitting that Japan had that sovereignty. In the same year, the Japanese government announced that the Diaoyu Islands belonged to Japan, which showed that Japan was in conflict of its commitment to the Potsdam Declaration. Now it tightly controls access to the island area.

Indignant at the US and Japanese moves on the Diaoyu Islands, Chinese people all over the world, including Chinese students studying in North America, have organized numerous campaigns to claim China's sovereignty over the islands since the 1970s.

The importance of the Diaoyu Islands is not in the desolate island itself but in the rumored rich oil reserves beneath, and the fishing rights over the area too. And symbolically, to the Chinese, the Diaoyu Islands are a clear barometer of Japanese expansionist sentiment.

In July 1996, a group of Japanese right sailed to the Diaoyu Islands, and set up a lighthouse and placed a Japanese flag over the rocky hills. The action infringed Chinese sovereignty and aroused public indignation and brought waves of furious protest from Chinese communities worldwide.

The culmination of this anger was the dispatch of the ship, Protecting Diaoyu Islands (Baodiao Hao), by Hong Kong activists for the Islands, on September 22, 1996. Chen Yuxiang (David Chan) and others sailed the ship into the area around the island on September 26, 1996. The ship was stopped by a vessel of the Japanese Maritime Safety Agency. Chen Yuxiang and several other Hong Kong compatriots jumped into the sea to protest. Chen drowned in the rough seas. A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry expressed the government's sorrow at his death and expressed sympathy to his family.

In June 2003, 15 activists, including Yin Minhong, from the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong joined forces to sail to the Diaoyu Islands to proclaim them as Chinese property. It was the first time that activists from the mainland joined the patriotic cause.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry reaffirmed China's sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands and its unswerving determination to defend the country's land in the wake of the two sailings by Chinese volunteers. Meanwhile, it said that China's consistent position to solve the dispute through consultation had not changed.

The ministry states:

"The Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands have long been inherent territory of China. Like Taiwan, the Diaoyu Islands are inalienable part of the territory of the People's Republic. China enjoys indisputable sovereignty over these islands and the natural resources in its affiliated sea areas. China's sovereignty over these islands is fully proven by history and is legally well-founded.

In view of the different positions on the Diaoyu Islands from the Japanese side, the Chinese government, proceeding from the development of Sino-Japanese relations and on condition of adhering to the consistent Chinese positions, reached an understanding with the Japanese government: (1) The issue of the Diaoyu Islands shall be shelved for future settlement, (2) neither side should take unilateral action and (3) The two sides should try to prevent this issue from becoming a disturbing factor in overall bilateral relations.

In recent years, the Japanese right from time to time have created incidents over the Diaoyu Islands. The Chinese side made solemn representations to the Japanese side through diplomatic channels. The Japanese government affirmed their basic position of neither participating nor supporting the activities of the right wing. The action of the right has been detrimental to the development of Sino-Japanese relations and runs counter to the stand of the Japanese government." (china.org.cn, November 13)

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