The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it would “seriously review the current exchanges and ties between Taiwan and the Philippines” after Manila deported 14 Taiwanese to China instead of to Taiwan.
Lawmakers are demanding that the nation’s representative to Manila be recalled to express Taiwan’s dissatisfaction with the Philippines’ handling of the deportation issue, but Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) said only that “all possible options are under consideration,” the Central News Agency said.
Ignoring the requests by the Economic and Cultural Office in Manila, the Philippine government sent the 14 Taiwanese and 10 Chinese detainees to China on a charter flight on Wednesday.
The individuals were arrested late last year on charges of cross-border fraud against Chinese nationals.
Yang was quoted as saying on Saturday that the Philippine government’s handling of the case was inappropriate, flawed and a violation of the jurisdiction principle of nationality.
“They did not heed our opinions at all,” Yang said, adding that the Philippine executive branch refused to release the Taiwanese suspects even after Taiwanese officials stationed in Manila and attorneys retained there had secured writs of habeas corpus issued by the Court of Appeals of the Philippines. “The Philippine government did not respect the legitimate rights of the suspects nor did it allow us the proper channels to fully state our position.”
After Taiwan lodged a strong protest over the issue on Wednesday, the Philippine government called a meeting the following day, which brought together Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, the justice minister and staff members of the Manila Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei to discuss response strategies.
Reports from Manila said the government there is scheduled to issue a statement today on the dispute.
Although Taiwan’s government agencies have been closed since Wednesday for the Lunar New Year holiday, diplomatic officials have continued to work on the case over the past few days, Yang said.
China reportedly pressured the Philippines to deport all the suspects to Beijing under a bilateral extradition treaty because the case involved huge illegal profits and all of the victims were Chinese citizens.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) deputy spokesman Steve Shia (夏季昌) said Philippine officials have maintained contact with Taiwan’s representative in Manila.
Last week the ministry summoned Philippine Representative to Taiwan Antonio Basilio and his deputy, Carlo Aquino, to state Taiwan’s position on the issue.
Follow-up options, including the possible recall of Taiwan’s representative in Manila, will be decided after an overall review of the latest developments, Shia said.
The last time Taiwan recalled a diplomatic mission chief was in 2008 in a row with Japan over an investigative report on the sinking of a Taiwanese ship that had collided with a Japanese Coast Guard boat in the waters off the disputed Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台).
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY AFP
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS