The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday confirmed that Palau's ambassador to Taiwan, Johnson Toribiong, who recently refused to attend a local court hearing regarding his alleged involvement in investment fraud, would not face any charges because of his diplomatic immunity.
Toribiong was asked by the Taipei District Court last month to attend a witness hearing in the case of the Palauan bank, FFBC, of which he is the chairman. The bank was alleged to have been involved in the illegal selling of funds in Taiwan.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Michel Lu (
Lu said that according to Article 31 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a diplomatic representative has immunity in criminal and civil jurisdictions where his diplomatic mission resides. This includes immunity from testifying in court.
Due to the sensitive nature of the diplomatic situation of Taiwan and the diplomatic status of Toribiong, the Judicial Yuan was reported to have expressed its concern to the Taipei District Court about handling the subpoena process carefully to avoid breaching etiquette, a Chinese-language newspaper reported.
However, local prosecutors and judges reportedly disagreed with the Judicial Yuan's concerns, saying Toribiong should at least have to testify in court.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
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A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching