A legislator decried the use of foreign brides as cheap surrogate mothers yesterday after highlighting the case of a married man who used another man's identity to marry a Cambodian woman so that she could bear his children.
The man, surnamed Chan, decided to find a foreign bride to bear his children as he and his wife had been unable to conceive.
As he was unable to use his own name, Chan registered with a marriage agency using the identity of a man surnamed Yao and went through the marriage formalities in December 2003.
After arriving in Taiwan, his Cambodian wife, surnamed Chung, was forced to live with Chan and bore him twin girls. But after giving birth, Chung's visa expired and she was unable to renew it, since her registered husband, surnamed Yao, had been killed in a fishing accident. In line with regulations, Chung was deported and the twin daughters were adopted by Chan and his family.
Chung's brother-in-law, a Taiwanese who married Chung's sister, said that according to the Law of Nationality (國籍法), the daughters should be in the custody of Chung, since her registered husband is deceased and that the children should have been deported along with her.
However, he said, nobody in the family knew what had happened in a behind-closed-doors meeting between Chan and the foreign affairs police that in the end allowed Chan to "adopt" the children.
In their desperation the family turned to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Tsai Chin-lung (
Tsai yesterday held a press conference to highlight the issue and said that it was a violation of human rights to use foreign brides as surrogate mothers, taking advantage of the fact that they could not speak Mandarin to report their unfair treatment.
Tsai said that the government even paid for Chung's plane ticket back to Cambodia, aiding Chan in getting rid of her.
Tsai Chia-huang (蔡家煌), a foreign affairs policeman, said that current regulations do not protect the rights of foreign brides, because without a national identification card they are not permitted to stay in the country once their visa is no longer valid or has expired.
Local foreign affairs police use different standards when granting visa renewals, but the government is working on unifying the system with respect for human rights as the foundation, he said.
Officials from the Department of Population under the Ministry of the Interior who were present at the press conference said that if the marriage between Chung and Yao was legally registered, her children would be of Taiwanese nationality.
But ministry officials could not comment on whether Chung would be allowed to return to her children or whether she was actually entitled to custody of them. The case would have to be looked into, they said.
According to ministry figures, there were approximately 365,000 foreign spouses in the country last year.
Any foreign brides wishing to report cases of injustice can call a special Legislative Yuan hotline at (02) 2358-6122.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods