Taiwan charges Chinese ship captain with cutting undersea cable

TAIPEI (AFP) — Taiwanese prosecutors said Friday they have charged a Chinese cargo ship captain for allegedly severing an undersea telecoms cable off the island in February.

The captain, surnamed Wang, and his Togolese-registered ship Hongtai have been detained in Taiwan since the incident in the strategically sensitive waterway separating Taiwan and China.

China insists Taiwan is part of its territory and uses a range of tactics, including military and political, to pressure Taipei to accept its claim of sovereignty.

The Hongtai, flying a flag of convenience, was crewed by eight Chinese nationals and had Chinese funding, Taiwan’s coast guard said at the time.

Wang was charged with violating Taiwan’s Telecommunications Management Act for “destroying submarine cable-related facilities,” the Tainan District Prosecutors Office said in a statement.

The Hongtai had been spotted “lingering” about 11 kilometers northwest of Jiangjun Fishing Port and was intercepted by the coast guard after the cable linking the Penghu archipelago and Taiwan was reported cut.

Prosecutors said Wang knew the ship’s electronic charts “marked the location of Taiwan’s undersea cables” and that the cable on the seabed off Tainan was a prohibited anchoring zone.

Wang allegedly “instructed the crew to release the anchor claw into the water in the early morning of 25 February with the intention of destroying the undersea cable,” prosecutors said.

He also “steered the ship in a zigzag motion above the cable, using the freighter’s anchor claw to cut the cable,” damaging the undersea cable and affecting communications between Taiwan and Penghu, they alleged.