A HONG KONG ship which rammed a Japanese coastguard vessel in a day of naval skirmishes near disputed islands in the East China Sea was damaged yesterday. It was forced to head back home last night after abandoning attempts to break through a Japanese blockade.
A flotilla of 20 Hong Kong and Taiwanese boats was thwarted by a Japanese fleet of 60 coast guard vessels in its attempt to land on the uninhabited islands.
Two Hong Kong activists and one Taiwanese protester made dramatic leaps from their boats on to Japanese coastguard vessels in the naval dodgems which began early in the day near the islands called the Senkakus in Japan and the Diaoyus by the Chinese. Both China and Taiwan claim the archipelago which lies in waters rich in fish about 200 km northeast of Taiwan.
In the most dramatic incident, the Hong Kong flagship, Protection Diaoyus, bedecked with Taiwan, Hong Kong and US flags steamed directly into the side of a coastguard ship. In the confusion, two protesters jumped on to the coastguard vessel and were held there as their ship disengaged. They were later handed over to a Taiwanese media vessel.
A third protester, who jumped from a Taiwanese boat on to another coastguard ship was also returned to the flotilla earlier, and a journalist who fell overboard during a second collision was rescued and taken to hospital.
The Japanese navy used loudspeakers and banners to warn off the protesters and unveiled some of their guns. But they did not apprehend the protest ships which entered the 12 nautical mile territorial waters claimed by Tokyo, despite a warning from Japanese government spokesman Seiroku Kajiyama that they might seize the boats.
Both Tokyo and Beijing have tried to stop the dispute stirring up nationalist passions and the Chinese government has refused to allow any public antiJapanese demonstrations.
However, activists congregated most of the day outside the Japanese consulate in Hong Kong, and 20 members of the Democratic Party handed in a letter of protest. A group burned a Japanese flag.
Passions have boiled up sporadically in Hong Kong and Taiwan since a Japanese right wing group built a makeshift lighthouse on one of the islands in July 1996. A Hong Kong activist drowned in September when be jumped from a protest boat and got caught in a ropes during a similar attempted landing.
Earlier this month, the dispute was rekindled when four Japanese extremists planted a Japanese flag on one of the islands and spent two hours there, during which they held a memorial ceremony. Japan took the islands after defeating imperial China in 1895.
Japan will take "appropriate measures", which could include seizing the ships, to block the activists from landing on the islands, a government spokesman said yesterday.
The Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Ryutaro Hashimoto, added: "We must not let them into our territorial waters."
China and Taiwan have asserted their rights to the islands since Japan's defeat in the second World War.