Recently, the government of Mohammed Muizzu of Maldives had given permission to the spy ship of its master China to come here.
The Muizzu government had said that the doors of its house were always open for friendly nations. Now the news is that the Chinese spy ship going to Maldives was stopped in the sea by the Indonesian Coast Guard team.
This has been revealed in the local news report of Maldives. The Indonesian Coast Guard (ICG) stopped a Chinese research ship heading to Male because it had switched off its automatic information system, Adhadhu reported on Sunday.
The move by Indonesian authorities came after the Chinese ship switched off its transponder three times between January 8 and 12 while traveling through its territorial waters.
The US Naval Institute said the Chinese government ship “Xiang Yang Hong 03” was intercepted by the ICG in the Sunda Strait area on January 11, the report said.
It is also said that when the ICG team interrogated the ship operators, they came to know from the crew that the transponder was not switched off, but it was broken.
The ICG did not attempt to board the Chinese ship but instead asked it to leave the country’s exclusive economic zone, The Asia Times reported.
According to international maritime law, all vessels traveling on archipelagic sea routes in Indonesian waters must be fitted with transponders.
Adhadhu reported that maritime traffic monitoring sites showed the ship’s location in the Java Sea on January 22.
However its current location is unknown. Let us tell you that on January 22, a few weeks after Maldives President Mohammed Muizzu returned from China, Damian Simon, an open-source intelligence researcher, had said that China’s research vessel – XIANG YANG HONG 03 – was headed towards Male.
Just a day later, the Maldivian Foreign Ministry confirmed the news but said the Chinese vessel would not conduct research in Maldivian territory.