Fishing crew to be set free once fines paid in Philippines
Print Edition
A PHILIPPINE court yesterday convicted nine Chinese fishermen of “poaching” and taking hundreds of endangered giant sea turtles from a disputed area of the South China Sea, fining each of them nearly US$103,000 but imposing no jail term.
The fishermen were arrested in May near China’s Half Moon Shoal and their boat and 555 sea turtles were seized.
The arrests sparked another spat between the Asian neighbors in the South China Sea.
Judge Ambrosio de Luna of the regional trial court in western Palawan Province found them guilty of “violating the country’s fisheries code,” ordering them to pay a fine of US$100,000 each for “poaching” plus US$2,666 each for taking wildlife, said Hazel Alaska, the clerk of court.
Alaska said de Luna could have imposed a jail term of up to 20 years for the taking of threatened or endangered species but decided to impose only a fine.
In the event of the fishermen failing to pay the fine, they will have to serve a maximum of six months in jail for each of the two cases, or a total of one year.
Once the fines are settled, the fishermen will be released from the provincial jail, she said. But if they fail to pay the fine, the time spent in detention since their arrest on May 6 can be counted and they can be released by next May.
China has pressed the Philippines to release the fishermen and their boat. Beijing warned Manila not to take any “provocative actions so as to avoid further damage to bilateral relations.”
The 11 fishermen were intercepted by Philippine police while conducting regular operations on May 6. Two minors were later released by the Philippine authorities.
The two said that the sea turtles they were accused of “poaching” were traded from a Vietnamese fishing boat.
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