A team of six local lawyers recruited by the Straits Exchange Foundation to help eight China-based Taiwanese businesspeople arrested for espionage is scheduled to visit China with the detainees' families after the Lunar New Year.
"While only Chinese lawyers can represent Taiwanese clients in Chinese court rooms, what we and the team will do for the arrested businesspeople is to pay them a humanitarian visit, hire high-caliber Chinese lawyers and offer our professional knowledge both in law and cross-strait negotiations," Yen Wan-ching (
Yen made the remarks after meeting with six of the detainees' families along with the six lawyers.
Kenneth Chiu (邱晃泉), of Kew & Lord law firm, said that although the lawyers would be unable to offer any direct services to the arrested Taiwanese businesspeople, they could provide other forms of assistance such as appealing to the Chinese government for humanitarian treatment.
According to Hanson Chiang (姜志俊) of the Hanson Law Office, the arrested Taiwanese businesspeople face jail terms of between six months and five years if convicted.
"Although the matter is still in the investigation stage and has not yet become a legal case, we have to act now and act fast," Chiang said.
As the mission of the team is to bring back the eight arrested Taiwanese businesspeople, Koo said that they will offer their utmost professional assistance to their Chinese counterparts.
"We'll not only work with them but also negotiate with and oversee what they do for our clients," he said.?
The other lawyers are: Fuldien Li (李復甸) of Li & Partners; Wellington Koo (顧立雄) of Formosa Transnational; Sunny Chang (張耿銘) of Horwath & Partners and Chian-feng (魏千峰), an attorney at law and the chairman of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
RSS