The Ministry of Foreign Affairs helped communicate between the National Immigration Agency (NIA) and the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) in the case of a Chinese dissident seeking political asylum in the US, an official said yesterday.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on Friday last week that Chinese dissident Wang Rui (王睿) had arrived in the US seeking asylum after spending four years in Taiwan, while agencies from Taiwan and the US worked on his case.
Department of North American Affairs Director-General Remus Chen (陳立國) told a news conference yesterday that the ministry played a supporting role in the matter by helping the NIA work with the AIT on the case.
Photo: Internet screen grab
Neither the NIA nor AIT responded to questions for more information.
Wang arrived in Taiwan in August 2014 on a package tour, but planned to seek asylum.
However, he decided in September 2015 to try to go to the US because Taiwan does not have a refugee law.
He was part of a group of five Chinese, including his girlfriend Yang Luo Yini (楊羅旖旎), who reportedly planned to sail to Guam or the Mariana Islands to seek political asylum.
Su Qianlong (蘇黔龍), Lu Ning (陸寧) and Shi Jian (石堅) reportedly bought a small sailboat in China’s Shandong Province and sailed to a beach in Taoyuan’s Dayuan District (大園), landing on Sept. 10, 2015, to pick up Wang and Yang Luo, who had arrived the preceding June. The couple were staying at an apartment in Taipei.
The five set off for Guam, but reportedly lost their way several times over the course of 30 days and were finally rescued by Taiwanese authorities, according to a report by RFA at the time.
“They’re lucky to be alive, in such big waves and such high winds, you have no idea,” one rescue team member told RFA after the five were detained and their heavily damaged boat impounded.
Officials initially suspected the five of spying, but Taiwanese human rights groups said they were Chinese dissidents fleeing persecution and called on the government to grant them political asylum.
Yang Luo was deported to China by immigration authorities on Sept. 25, 2015, while Taoyuan prosecutors charged the four men with violating the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法) and acting as accomplices to criminal activities.
Wang told RFA that all five had been targeted by Chinese authorities for their human rights and political activism, including being held in detention and placed under surveillance by state security police.
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
INTENSIFYING THREATS: Beijing’s tactics include massive attacks on the government service network, aircraft and naval vessel incursions and damaging undersea cables China is prepared to interfere in November’s nine-in-one local elections by launching massive attacks on the Taiwanese government’s service network (GSN), a report published by the National Security Bureau showed. The report was submitted to the Legislative Yuan ahead of the bureau’s scheduled briefing at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The national security team has identified about 13,000 suspicious Internet accounts and 860,000 disputed messages, the bureau said of China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. The disputed messages focus on major foreign affairs, national defense and economic issues, which were produced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed through Chinese
RSS