Taiwan this week repatriated eight Chinese nationals convicted for hijacking Chinese aircraft to Taiwan, the Cabinet-level Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday.
The MAC has kept a low profile concerning the repatriation of the hijackers, partly because most Chinese hijackers resist repatriation. The hijackers will very likely stand trial again after their return to China because Beijing does not recognize Taiwan's judicial authority.
Four of the hijackers -- Qi Daquan (
Four other hijackers -- Zhang Hai (
The eight hijackers were sent to Matsu earlier this week, under police escort and accompanied by staff members of the quasi-official Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and Taiwan's Red Cross Society.
The MAC said it authorized the SEF to handle the repatriation earlier this month after the Red Cross Societies on both sides of the Strait reached a consensus on the issue.
Noting that aircraft hijacking is a universal crime, the MAC said all the hijackers have served jail terms and have been released on parole in accordance with Taiwan law.
A total of 13 Chinese commercial aircraft were hijacked by 18 Chinese and flown to Taiwan between 1993 and 1998. Two hijackers -- Huang Shugang (
In February 1999, three hijackers -- Yang Mingde (
The attempt failed and the trio were brought back to Taiwan and convicted of hijacking a second time. They are now in the process of appeals.
The incident caused a suspension in the repatriation of hijackers for more than a year.
"Police officers and SEF staff have exercised great prudence in handling the repatriation of the two batches of mainland hijackers in the past two days," a MAC official said.
Gao Jun, one of the hijackers repatriated yesterday, began a hunger strike on Feb. 19 when he was paroled by the Taipei Prison and transferred to the Hsinchu Refugee Camp for Mainland Chinese to await deportation.
In response to the hunger strike, he was shackled to a stretcher by detention center staff and transferred to a hospital in Hsinchu, where he was force-fed by doctors.
"For humanitarian reasons, we force-fed him to prolong his life," said Peng Ching-chin (
"He used to resist repatriation, now he says he wants to go back [to China] soon. But I wonder if, when we're to send him back, he might resist again," Lai Hsieh-yi (
Gao, a garment seller from the northern Chinese city of Qingdao, used a scalpel to hijack a Chinese Northern Airlines MD-82 jet while on a flight from Qingdao to Fuzhou on Dec. 8, 1993.
Taiwan detained Gao but returned the plane -- along with 129 passengers and eight crew members -- to China.
Gao has reportedly attempted suicide seven times over the last seven years -- by swallowing a toothbrush, batteries, paper clips and a thermometer.
Among the other hijackers, Air China pilot Yuan Bin and his wife Xu Mei commandeered a jet with 104 passengers in 1998. They complained of low pay and miserable perks on the Chinese flag-carrier.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
RSS