Philippines plans base on Y’Ami island

MANILA: The Philippines will start building a marine base next month on its northernmost uninhabited island, near Taiwan, to boost defence arrangements and discourage poachers from its fishing grounds, a military spokesman said on Thursday. The two nations’ coast guard ships have confronted each other in the rich fishing waters where their exclusive economic zones overlap, and the neighbours nearly cut ties in 2013, after a Philippine vessel fired on a Taiwanese fishing boat, killing a fisherman. “We need to have a presence there,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Isagani Nato, spokesman of the Northern Luzon Command of the Philippines, adding that building work on Mavulis island would start next month. “It’s still uninhabited, that is why we are going to put up a facility to guard our maritime domain, and against poaching during the fishing period.” Nato said a small marine unit would be stationed on the island, also known as Y’Ami, about 80 kilometres distant from Taiwan, to increase the military presence and improve information gathering. He did not give details of the size of the unit, but added that the structures on the island would also afford shelter to fishermen. The base will help monitor ships passing through the Balintang Channel, an international trade route in the northern Philippines used by vessels crossing from the busy waterway of the South China Sea to the Pacific Ocean. Taiwan and the Philippines also have overlapping claims in the South China Sea, along with Brunei, China, Malaysia and Vietnam. More than 20 years ago, Philippine defence officials said Taiwan had proposed to lease the uninhabited island as a gunnery range for its military, promising to donate a secondhand fighter as part of the deal. Nothing came of the agreement as Manila recognises Beijing’s one-China policy, although it has a de facto embassy in Taipei, where thousands of Filipinos work in homes and factories. Tycoon on watch list The Philippines’ Department of Justice has placed a Japanese gaming tycoon on the country’s immigration watch list after a string of criminal charges filed against him by his former company. In a two-page order released on Thursday, Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre directed all immigration officers to be on the lookout for Kazuo Okada, who is facing fraud and perjury charges in the Philippines. “Considering the gravity of the possible offences he might have committed, there is a strong probability that he may attempt to place himself beyond the reach of the legal processes of the government by leaving the country,” the order said. The department, however, could not confirm if Okada was still in the country, based on records of the Bureau of Immigration. Okada was chief executive officer of Tiger Resort Leisure and Entertainment Inc, a subsidiary of Japanese firm Universal Entertainment Corporation (UEC), and owner and operator of casino resort-hotel Okada Manila, for one month last year. During that time, he allegedly disbursed company funds amounting to $3 million, supposedly for consultancy fees and salaries, without any authorisation from the board. He also allegedly awarded a $7 million contract to one of his companies in the Philippines to supply LED fixtures to Okada Manila.The LED fixtures were later found to be defective, according to one of the charges files against the tycoon. Okada and his companies have also been under investigation in the United States for possible violations of anti-bribery laws in relation to a $2 billion casino project in the Philippines. 13 killed in drug busts Philippine police killed 13 suspected drug dealers and arrested more than 100 people in dozens of anti-narcotics operations on Wednesday in a province north of the capital, its police chief said. More than 4,000 Filipinos have been killed by police during President Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial 20-month-old war on drugs, and thousands more by unidentified armed men. Most killings have been in rundown areas of Metro Manila and the nearby provinces of Bulacan and Cavite. Police in Bulacan ran about 60 drugs “buy-bust”, or sting, operations in nine towns, the police chief said on Thursday. Bulacan is where 32 people were killed in a single day in August last year. Last month, an additional 10 drug suspects died in a bloody night of drug busts. “These operations are part of our stepped-up campaign against drugs and all other forms of criminality in the province,” Bulacan police chief Romeo Caramat said. — Agencies