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.
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
RSS