National Immigration Agency (NIA) officials yesterday said they have broken up a child-smuggling ring where forged documents were allegedly used to bring Vietnamese children into Taiwan to work on farms in the nation’s central and southern regions.
Investigators found that at least 17 Vietnamese children were involved in the case.
Eleven of them, three boys and eight girls between the ages of five and 13, had been brought into the nation to live with people posing as their parents, they said.
Photo courtesy of the Yunlin District Prosecutors’ Office
“We arrested 17 couples, comprised of Taiwanese men and Vietnamese women, during the raids over the past few days,” NIA Taichung City Specialized Operation Brigade Captain Lin Jui-lin (林瑞麟) said.
Lin said the children were brought to Taiwan using fake documents to be exploited as child labor, but the suspects denied the accusations.
The investigation was handed over to the Yunlin District Prosecutors’ Office, where officials intended to press charges of breaches of the Human Trafficking Prevention Act (人口販運防制法) and the Passport Statute Enforcement Regulations (護照條例施行細則).
Photo: CNA
NIA officials said the people obtained forged birth certificates produced in Vietnam at a cost of US$3,000 to US$7,000 each.
They then used the forged documents to apply for Republic of China passports for the children at Taiwan’s representative office in Ho Chi Minh City, Lin said.
Investigators found that most of the children were actually the children of the relatives or neighbors of the Vietnamese women in Taiwan.
Photo: Copy by Yang Cheng-chun, Taipei Times
Some of the couples told police that the children were being taken care of, denying accusations of child labor.
Lin said that some of the children were working on the farms and tea plantations owned by the couples, adding that one of the girls has been attending elementary school in Taiwan.
One of the couples said they will fight the allegations, as the NIA said it would repatriate the children.
“In Vietnam, these kids live in poverty and cannot eat three meals per day. There is no work for them to earn money for their family. Here in Taiwan, they say they are happy to live with their aunts and uncles, because they can help with farm work and they eat well. The kids have said they want to stay in Taiwan, and they do not want to go back to Vietnam,” one of the couples said, according to a report by the Chinese-language Apple Daily.
“The kids are the relatives of the couples who know their biological parents in Vietnam. They have agreed to send the children to Taiwan to be looked after by us and other families, because the conditions here are much better than in Vietnam,” the couple said, according to the report.
“They also want the children to become Taiwanese citizens, so they can have better lives when they grow up,” they added.
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