The Philippines’ decision to send 14 Taiwanese fraud suspects to China for trial was made in observance of Manila’s “one China” policy, Philippine Presidential Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr said yesterday.
Ochoa’s remarks in an interview on DZMM Radio in the Philippines were the first official comment from the Presidential Office in Manila since a dispute broke out on Feb. 2 between Taiwan and the Philippines over Manila’s deportation of 14 Taiwanese to China that same day.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded last night to Ochoa’s remarks with a statement that said Taiwan’s understanding of the Philippines’ “one China policy” was that it was a policy, not a law, and that any country should have its foreign policy based in accordance with its laws.
In line with the Philippines’ immigration law, the Taiwanese should have been deported to Taiwan, not China, the ministry said.
Earlier yesterday, Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) said the government was seeking talks with several Southeast Asian countries about the possibility of a joint effort to combat cross-border crime.
In an interview with the Central News Agency, Yang said incidents of Chinese and Taiwanese working together to defraud people in China and Taiwan have occurred not only in the Philippines, but in other Southeast Asian countries as well.
Apart from telephone and Internet fraud, cross-border drug trafficking and arms smuggling are also a problem, he said.
“We need to build a mechanism for cooperation to combat international crime,” he said.
The foreign ministry and the Ministry of Justice will draft a proposal on talking with Southeast Asian countries on combating cross-border crime, Yang said.
Yang also said he would summon Antonio Basilio, head of the Manila Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei, as soon as Representative to Manila Donald Lee (李傳通) returned from to Taipei yesterday.
The foreign ministry has called in Basilio and his deputies three times over the past week to lodge protests over what it said was the Philippines’ disregard for Taiwan’s jurisdiction over the Taiwanese deported to China.
Meanwhile, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) accused Lee of neglecting his duty.
Tsai said the Taiwanese were arrested by Philippine authorities in late December and Lee had 38 days to negotiate with Manila before they were deported to China. However, according to information he received from Taiwanese businesspeople in the Philippines, Lee played golf many times during that period, Tsai said.
“It was a lie when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Lee claimed that they had done their best to deal with Manila over this matter,” Tsai said.
Some of the parents of the Taiwanese suspects told a press conference yesterday that they hoped their offspring could be tried by Taiwanese courts, not Chinese.
Accompanied by DPP lawmakers, the mother of one deportees said her son should be punished if he has “done something wrong, but I hope he can be tried here in Taiwan, so that I can at least see him.”
The father of another suspect apologized for his son “upsetting the government and society.” He said he hoped his son would be returned to Taiwan for trial because he did not know how trials were conducted in China.
Another parent said he did not know where his son was because the foreign ministry had not yet contacted him or his family, and he had only learned about the deportation from TV reports.
Additional reporting by Rich Chang
This story has been updated since it was first printed.
LONG FLIGHT: The jets would be flown by US pilots, with Taiwanese copilots in the two-seat F-16D variant to help familiarize them with the aircraft, the source said The US is expected to fly 10 Lockheed Martin F-16C/D Block 70/72 jets to Taiwan over the coming months to fulfill a long-awaited order of 66 aircraft, a defense official said yesterday. Word that the first batch of the jets would be delivered soon was welcome news to Taiwan, which has become concerned about delays in the delivery of US arms amid rising military tensions with China. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the initial tranche of the nation’s F-16s are rolling off assembly lines in the US and would be flown under their own power to Taiwan by way
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
RSS