Surrounded by Japanese coastguard vessels in rough seas, the seasick group gives up and decides to return home
Thirteen Hong Kong and mainland activists abandoned their plan of landing on the disputed Diaoyu islands yesterday after their boat was circled by Japanese coastguard ships for six hours in rough seas.
The protest - the first local one over the islands in five years - ended with the symbolic burning of a Japanese military flag before the ship turned back and headed for the mainland coast.
'The situation at sea was very bad. The boat couldn't move at all, people started feeling seasick. So in the afternoon, we agreed we should abandon the plan and left,' said Wong Kwok-ho, a Hong Kong-based committee member of the Action Committee for Defending the Diaoyu Islands.
The 13 activists, three from Hong Kong and 10 from the mainland, reached the disputed waters near the islets at 8am yesterday morning. They were immediately surrounded by Japanese coastguard vessels.
Each of the protesters threw a white chrysanthemum into the sea in memory of David Chan Yuk-cheung, who drowned after he leapt into the sea tied to a rope during a voyage to the islands in the autumn of 1996. That trip, like the latest, was to insist on Chinese sovereignty over the islets.