Four men were indicted by Taipei prosecutors on Thursday on charges of illegally arranging for Taiwanese students to study in China. The prosecutors have asked that they be given heavy punishments.
The four were charged with violating the Statute Governing the Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例), and could be subject to prison terms of no more than one year, the prosecutor in charge of the case said.
According to the indictment, two men, surnamed Yeh and Sun, who ran companies in Taipei, and two clerks, surnamed Lin and Her, recruited students through the Internet and local newspapers from 2002 to 2005 to study in universities, senior high schools and post-graduate institutes in China.
Yeh and Sun also held seminars in the Taipei and Hsinchu areas to attract students by providing auxiliary classes to help them prepare for entrance examinations to Chinese universities.
In March 2003, the four men flew with 11 Taiwanese students to Beijing, where the students took part in a special pre-entrance exam course at the China Politics and Law University. Each student had to pay between NT$200,000 and NT$250,000 for the trip and the 10-day course.
That same month, Lin accompanied the 11 students to Hong Kong, where the students took the university entrance examination for Hong Kong University's economics and law school. Nine of them were admitted.
By law, private individuals, groups and institutions are banned from recruiting local students to study in China or acting as middle men for Chinese educational institutes, prosecutors said.
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