China has executed Wo Weihan (伍維漢), a 59-year-old businessman accused of spying for Taiwan, despite a last-ditch effort by his daughters to appeal for clemency through diplomatic channels, his family said yesterday.
Wo’s execution was confirmed by the Austrian embassy in Beijing, said Michael Rolufs, his son-in-law, who arrived in Beijing earlier this week with his wife for a last visit.
Wo was sentenced to death in May last year and his final appeal was denied on Feb. 29 but the scheme had been delayed pending a review.
Ran Chen said she visited her father at a Beijing court on Thursday, their first meeting since he was detained almost four years ago.
Wo’s daughters are Austrian citizens and Vienna had been pursuing the case on their behalf.
Human rights groups and diplomats from the EU and the US also appealed on his behalf, contending that he did not receive a fair trial and was given an overly harsh sentence.
A copy of Wo’s conviction said his alleged crimes included revealing the health status of an unnamed high-ranking Chinese official. China considers information about the health of its leaders to be a state secret.
Wo was also convicted of passing on data about missile control systems, information Chen said had been published in a magazine and was only later classified as secret.
Wo was accused of passing the information through a middle man to a group linked to the Taiwanese intelligence agencies.
China’s Foreign Ministry said Wo had violated the law and his trial had been fair.
“Just because Wo Weihan has foreign relatives does not mean his case should be handled differently,” spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) told a news conference.
The US yesterday strongly condemned the execution.
“We are deeply disturbed and dismayed by reports that the Chinese government has carried out the death penalty against Wo Weihan,” Susan Stevenson, a spokeswoman at the US embassy in Beijing said.
She said that Wo’s arrest and trial had fallen short of international standards for due process.
“Reportedly Mr Wo did not have access to legal counsel until after the prosecuting officials completed their investigation,” Stevenson said.
“His confession was coerced and the charges against him were questionable,” she said.
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
A total of 41 US military personnel were stationed in Taiwan as of December last year, a US congressional report said on Friday last week ahead of Tuesday’s passage of an aid package that included US$8 billion for Taiwan. The Congressional Research Service in a report titled Taiwan Defense Issues for Congress said that according to the US Department of Defense’s Defense Manpower Data Center, 41 US military personnel were assigned for duty in Taiwan. Although the normalization of relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1979 included a vow to withdraw a military presence from Taiwan, “observers have indicated
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Wednesday said that a new chip manufacturing technology called “A16” is to enter production in the second half of 2026, setting up a showdown with longtime rival Intel over who can make the fastest chips. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract manufacturer of advanced computing chips and a key supplier to Nvidia and Apple, announced the news at a conference in Santa Clara, California, where TSMC executives said that makers of artificial intelligence (AI) chips will likely be the first adopters of the technology rather than a smartphone maker. Analysts said that the technologies announced on
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry