ISHIGAKI, Japan (AFP) - Japan on Friday deported pro-Beijing activists who had sailed to a disputed island, as Tokyo moved swiftly to put an end to a potentially damaging row with China. The deportations came just 48 hours after some of the 14 had become the first non-Japanese to set foot on any part of the archipelago since 2004. Half of the group were put aboard a commercial airliner in the Okinawan main city of Naha, bound directly for Hong Kong, with the other half taken back to their boat in Ishigaki. An AFP journalist in Ishigaki said the seven arrived by police bus and were taken on board a coastguard boat as Japanese nationalists shouted slogans nearby.
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