Taiwan’s response to the Philippines’ recent deportation of 14 Taiwanese to China sent a message to Manila to “take Taiwan seriously” on the diplomatic front, Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) said yesterday.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) announced on Monday that it would recall Representative to Manila Donald Lee (李傳通) and would implement stricter screening of applications by Philippine nationals seeking to work in Taiwan.
The measures were announced after the Philippines ignored Taiwan’s requests and deported 14 Taiwanese suspected of fraud to China on Feb. 2.
The Taiwanese, along with 10 Chinese suspects, were arrested in the Philippines in December on charges of cross-border fraud directed at Chinese nationals.
“The impact of these measures may be limited, but we’re sending a strong message to the Philippines that it should take Taiwan seriously,” Yang said.
The Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO) in Taiwan issued a statement on Monday saying that the suspects were deported to China because “all the victims are Chinese, all the accomplices are Chinese and the results can be best settled in China.”
The office added that it “deeply regrets” the involvement of -Taiwanese in the case.
However, Yang said that while Taiwan recognized the “goodwill and regret” in the MECO statement, the Philippines had damaged relations with Taiwan because of its handling of the case.
The fact that the Philippines did not offer Taiwan direct communications channels to relevant government agencies, such as the Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs and Department of Justice, throughout the incident was “unacceptable,” Yang said.
“All we could do was to communicate through the MECO, and that was not enough,” he said.
Yang said Philippine authorities refused to grant Taiwanese officials access to a meeting on Tuesday last week to discuss the deportation issue, and failed to inform the Taiwanese side of the results of another closed-door meeting until the afternoon of Wednesday last week, when the Taiwanese suspects had already been deported.
Taiwan welcomed the Philippines’ offer in its statement to establish a mechanism to avoid such incidents in the future, Yang said.
Although President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration said it had sent a strong message to the Philippines, lawmakers across party lines panned the government’s response as being too weak and not proactive enough.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday said the incident was the biggest diplomatic setback of Ma’s term in office.
The Ma government, in order to please China, has belittled and limited Taiwan’s sovereignty and identity, thereby eroding Taiwan’s international status, she said.
“Every time the Ma government runs into a dispute with China, it never shows determination to protect the country’s sovereignty and interests,” she said.
The government’s policies confused other countries about Taiwan’s relations with China. Moreover, Taiwan’s diplomats are also confused about Taiwan’s relationship with China — is Beijing a rival or a friend, Tsai said.
Meanwhile, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Justin Chou (周守訓) said MOFA should take more srong actions against the Philippines, “or else the situation could become unfavorable to Taiwan should some sort of ‘domino effect’ form among the international community.”
At a separate setting, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) -Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) said she did not expect China to respond to Taiwan’s request regarding the 14 Taiwanese until Chinese officials return to work today after the Lunar New Year holiday.
The council had asked the Straits Exchange Foundation to contact its Chinese counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, soon after the Taiwanese were deported to China, she said.
“We expressed our position clearly and firmly,” she said. “We hope the 14 Taiwanese will be sent back to Taiwan to stand trial and that the other side will keep us informed of the latest situation as soon as possible. We also emphasized that their rights to litigation must be protected.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
ELITE UNIT: President William Lai yesterday praised the National Police Agency’s Special Operations Group after watching it go through assault training and hostage rescue drills The US Navy regularly conducts global war games to develop deterrence strategies against a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, aimed at making the nation “a very difficult target to take,” US Acting Chief of Naval Operations James Kilby said on Wednesday. Testifying before the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, Kilby said the navy has studied the issue extensively, including routine simulations at the Naval War College. The navy is focused on five key areas: long-range strike capabilities; countering China’s command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting; terminal ship defense; contested logistics; and nontraditional maritime denial tactics, Kilby
RSS