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Dead bodies bring arrest of captain and crewman

A Taiwanese skipper and a member of his crew have been detained by Chinese authorities after three Chinese illegal immigrants were found dead on their fishing boat, officials said yesterday.

"We were told by the families and some civil organizations the skipper and the crewmember had been arrested and the ship detained in Pingtan (平潭), Fujian Province, on May 3," an official with the Coast Guard Administration said.

The skipper was identified as Lo Wen-pin (羅文斌), 36, and the crewmember Hsueh Kai-hsing (薛凱興), also 36.

"Details of the maritime event were not immediately clear, but evidence suggests it happened when the fishing boat tried to smuggle 11 illegal Chinese immigrants into [Taiwan]," the Coast Guard official said.

"But three of them suffocated to death in the ship's tiny cabin below the deck," he said.

Official records indicate the Chin Hui, a 10-tonne fishing boat based in Suao, sailed to China on April 24 and returned to its base on April 30 before departing again on May 1.

"For unknown reasons, the ship left the harbor [Suao] with the three bodies and the rest of the illegal immigrants."

"The skipper and his crew could have been abducted back to the mainland" by the remaining illegal immigrants, he said.

The Straits Exchange Foundation mailed a letter to its Chinese counterpart Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait for help.
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