Taiwan's coast guard detains Chinese-crewed cargo vessel after undersea cable 'severed'

Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration, Ocean Affairs Council said it received a report from Chunghwa Telecom in the early hours of 25 February that a subsea communications cable connecting the main island of Taiwan with Taiwan’s Penghu archipelago of islands, which lie between Taiwan and China in the Taiwan Strait had stopped functioning.

A report on the incident from the coast guard office, translated automatically by Google’s translation services, said it had been monitoring a ’stranded’ vessel from the evening of 22 February up until the time of the Chunghwa Telecom alert of a severed cable. The coast guard said it attempted to contact the stranded vessel, with an AIS listing of Hongtai 58, seven times without response and deployed a coast guard vessel to the stranded vessel’s location, 0.5 nautical miles north of the Taiwan-Penghu Third Undersea Cable Line that had been severed.

According to the chronology of events, as translated, the Coast Guard Administration vessel met the stranded vessel prior to the subsea cable outage. The Coast Guard Administration said it found the vessel to be in the midst of a criminal act and sought first to repel the vessel and later to detain it. 

Unable to board the vessel due to height differences and poor sea conditions, the Coast Guard Administration deployed two additional vessels to the scene. 

"The Qijin ship and PP-10059 boat were dispatched to reinforce," the coast guard report said.

"At 0230, the Tainan Coast Guard’s 10079 boat arrived six nautical miles northwest of Jiangjun Fishing Port and found the Hong ship anchored and stranded. It immediately broadcast to drive it away. At 0308, the Hong ship began to sail northwest. At 0324, when the Coast Guard Administration received Chunghwa Telecom’s initial judgment that [the company suspected external damage to the cable], the coast guard immediately notified its 10079 boat to intercept the Hong ship," the Coast Guard Administration said. 

"After communicating with the Hong ship by radio, [crew claimed] the ship was Hongtai 168, but the AIS showed Hongtai 58." 

After co-ordinating with the Maritime and Port Bureau to provide a ship berth, the cargo vessel was escorted back to Anping Port in Tainan.

The Coast Guard Administration said the case is being handled as a national security matter and is under the purview of the Tainan District Prosecutor’s Office for investigation.

Despite the cable communications line being severed or disconnected, communications between the two Taiwanese regions were not interrupted, with a "backup cable" activated, the coast guard said. Taiwan said its investigation will examine whether the Togo-flagged vessel’s actions in allegedly severing the undersea cable were accidental or sabotage.

"The Coast Guard Administration emphasises that whether the cause of the submarine cable breakage was intentional sabotage or a simple accident remains to be further investigated and clarified; the Togolese cargo ship involved was found to be a makeshift ship with Chinese capital background, and the eight crew members on board were all Chinese nationals. It cannot be ruled out that it was a grey area intrusion operation by China. The Coast Guard Administration will co-operate with the prosecutor’s office in the investigation and make every effort to clarify the truth," the Coast Guard Administration said.