Japan mulls special police to guard disputed islands

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ANKARA (AA) - Japan is mulling to set up a special police force to guard the disputed islands in East China Sea, local media reported.

"Japan police will deploy a new special unit in Okinawa next year. The armed [cops] will patrol remote islands near the country’s borders to guard against the international intruders. That includes the Senkaku islands and the East China Sea,” Japan’s public broadcaster NHK said in a live news broadcast early Monday.

Japan controls a set of five disputed uninhabited islands in the East China Sea which are known as Senkaku in the country while China also claims and calls them Diaoyu. Besides, Taiwan also lays claim over the disputed islands.

The NHK report said that a group of activists from Hong Kong had “illegally” landed on the Senkaku islands in 2012. They were arrested by Japanese authorities.

“The country [Japan] also says Chinese government ships have repeatedly violated the Japanese territorial waters in the area,” it added.

The newly proposed police unit will be based on Okinawa Island along the southern borders of Japan. The cops will be “armed with automatic weapons”, the NHK said.

The set of islets is located equidistant, about 200 kilometers (124 miles), southwest from Japan’s Okinawa island and northeast of Taiwan.

Senkaku, a set of five islets and three barren rocks, covers an area of 7 square kilometers (2.7 square miles).

After China was defeated in the first Sino-Japanese war from 1894 to 1895, Tokyo annexed the islands.

The Treaty of San Francisco, signed after World War II, returned to China most of the territories previously occupied by Japan, but the set of islands was left out.

The control of the islands remained with the U.S. following the terms of Japan’s surrender 1971 when they were returned to Japan along with Okinawa island and other surrounding islands.

In 1969, the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East had said that the region between Taiwan and Japan “appears to have great promise as a future oil province of the world”.