Japan’s government is trying to find out how video clips, apparently shot by its Coast Guard during a confrontation with a Chinese trawler in September, ended up on YouTube this week.
The clips, which have now been broadcast on Japanese television news programs, appear to show the Chinese ship ramming two Japanese Coast Guard vessels during a stand-off in disputed waters. After the incident, Japan initially detained the Chinese ship’s captain but then released him under intense diplomatic pressure.
As Reuters reported, Japan’s government had “released the video for viewing by a small number of lawmakers but refused to make it public for fear of inflaming anti-Chinese sentiment.” The news agency added, the clips “could harden Japanese public opinion against China by appearing to show the Chinese seaman, who was later freed, was at fault.”
On Friday, Yoshito Sengoku, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, told reporters, “If it turns out that a public servant deliberately leaked images, then that is a clear breach of the law.”
Several edits of the material were posted online, including this one featuring English titles, which appears to show the second clash between the two nations’ vessels:
As my colleague Edward Wong explained last month, “the Chinese and Japanese boats encountered each other around the islands known as the Diaoyu to the Chinese and Senkaku to the Japanese in the East China Sea, an area rich in fish and deposits of natural gas and oil. Both nations claim the islands as their territory, but Japan administers the area. Japanese patrol boats usually chase away Chinese vessels.”
The United States has been trying to ease the tension between the two nations over their competing claims to the cluster of small islands in the East China Sea, my colleague Mark Landler reported last week.
The video of the clash at sea appeared online just days after Russia’s president, Dmitri Medvedev, posted two photographs on TwitPic of his visit to another set of disputed islands, the Kurils, which are claimed by both Japan and Russia. To caption one of the images, Mr. Medvedev wrote, “There are so many beautiful places in Russia!”
