Two female Taiwanese students were killed in the dormitory of a Japanese language school in Tokyo yesterday. At present no motive for the murders has been ascertained, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said.
Su Qi-cheng (蘇啟誠), deputy secretary-general of the ministry’s Association of East Asian Relations, said the ministry has requested that the police in Japan, who are investigating the incident, keep Taiwanese officials up to date with the latest developments
According to Japanese media -reports, the two students, 23-year-old Lin Chih-ying (林芷瀅) and 25-year-old Julia Chu (朱立婕), were found covered in blood in the bedroom and doorway of a dormitory at the Intercultural Institute of Japan in the Taito area of eastern Tokyo.
Photo: CNA
One of the women died at the scene, the other a short time later after being rushed to hospital. Both had been reportedly stabbed in the neck.
The Japanese media reported that police in Tokyo received a report of the incident at 11am yesterday from two teachers at the Intercultural Institute of Japan, after being informed by two male Taiwanese students that they were unable to contact the women.
A police search of the dormitory failed to turn up keys to the apartment or the murder weapon, according to Japanese media reports, with the police quoted as saying that the women died from knife wounds to the carotid artery from which they bled to death.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson James Chang (章計平) said Taiwan’s representative office in Tokyo had held an urgent meeting and set up a special task force to handle the case, adding that the ministry would provide all necessary assistance to the -families of the two students.
“An emergency task force has been formed by Taiwan’s representative office in Tokyo to look into the details of the incident,” Chang said. “Our staff has arrived at the scene to collaborate with the local police.”
Members of the victims’ families arrived in the city late yesterday.
Lin’s father told reporters in Greater Taichung yesterday that when he last spoke to his daughter on Wednesday night by Internet phone, she said she was planning to visit Hokkaido in northern Japan the next day. He said it was hard for him to accept that just one day later she had died.
The father added that he believed the women were killed by someone they knew, noting that the dormitory has a security system that requires an electronic security card for entry and exit.
Additional reporting by CNA
A signaling system malfunction disrupted high-speed rail (HSR) services beginning at 8am today, with trains temporarily reduced to three northbound and three southbound trains per hour as authorities conduct inspections. The malfunction occurred on a section of track in Miaoli County during pre-operation checks early this morning, forcing northbound and southbound trains to use a single track, the HSR operator said. The regular schedule has been replaced with three hourly trains offering only nonreserved seating in each direction, stopping at every station, it said, adding that business class cars would still have reserved seating. Departures from terminal stations are scheduled at the top
DRONE CENTRAL: Taiwan aims to become Asia’s democratic hub for drones, with most exports focused on high-quality military-grade models, an official said Taiwan’s drone industry is expected to expand significantly by 2030, producing 100,000 units per month and exporting half of them, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Current drone production capacity is about 15,000 units per month, but the industry can quickly scale up as demand increases, Industrial Development Administration Director-General Chiou Chyou-huey (邱求慧) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s drone output grew 2.5-fold last year to NT$12.9 billion (US$408.3 million) under a government program to develop the uncrewed vehicle sector, he said. The Executive Yuan in October last year approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion into domestic production of uncrewed aerial
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
WARNING: China should stop engaging in actions that undermine regional peace and stability, as it would only build resentment among people across the Strait, the CGA said China has deployed more than 100 navy, coast guard and other vessels in waters from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea and the western Pacific since US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met in Beijing, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday. “In this part of the world, #China is the one & only PROBLEM wrecking the #StatusQuo & threatening regional peace & stability,” Wu wrote on X. In a separate post, he said Beijing was coercing Taiwan’s maritime domain, calling it illegal and provocative, after the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) expelled a
RSS