Kaohsiung judges will be accompanied by police officers and Brazilian diplomats to the Kaohsiung home of Taiwanese-Brazilian boy Iruan Ergui Wu (
The Supreme Court set a deadline of today for Iruan's uncle, Wu Huo-yen (吳火眼), to hand over the eight-year-old boy, who has been at the center of a custody battle stretching back to 2002.
"The case will be closed when Iruan is under the Brazilian diplomats' escort," said Liao Cheng-hsiung (
"We hope that the Wu family will respect the court decision and let Iruan go," Liao said.
Iruan was born in Brazil in 1995 to a Brazilian woman and a Taiwanese fisherman. His mother died in 1998 and his father brought him to Taiwan in 2001, but died two weeks later. In that same year, Iruan received Republic of China citizenship and his uncle applied for guardianship.
The Supreme Court ruled on Nov. 13 last year that Iruan must return to his grandmother in Brazil, who is the boy's legal guardian.
Liao said he hoped the Wu family would not try to defy the court order but that the police are authorized to take Iruan away by force if necessary.
Judges could also fine the Wu family between NT$30,000 and NT$300,000 each time they resist attempts to repatriate the boy, or jail Iruan's uncle until the family turns Iruan over.
"Nothing is going to stop us enforcing the law," he said.
Although the Brazilian diplomats are authorized to represent Iruan's Brazilian grandmother, it is up to Taiwanese law enforcement officers to see that the child is handed over to them.
In a last-ditch attempt to stay in the country, Iruan wrote to President Chen Shui-bian (
In a reply published yesterday, Chen said that everybody had to respect the law.
"I would like you to be here as well. But we all have to respect the decisions of the court, even the president. Taiwan will always be your home and you are always welcome to come back," Chen said.
Paulo Pinto, head of the Brazil Business Center, which acts as Brazil's representative office in Taiwan in the absence of formal diplomatic ties, has been standing by in Kaohsiung and will go with police officers today to escort Iruan back to Brazil.
According to the center, Pinto and his wife are planning to fly with Iruan from Kaohsiung's international airport this afternoon.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
RSS