The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said on Saturday it would continue to help in the search for seven Taiwanese businessmen missing off the coast of Madagascar since July 11, even after the first round of search operations ended yesterday.
The ministry said in a statement that it would continue to provide whatever help necessary to continue the search, such as translation, legal consultation and other technical assistance.
ASSISTANCE
The help would be given through a 13-member task force of Taiwanese expatriates in Madagascar and former diplomatic officials posted in the country, the ministry said.
The statement was issued after members of two of the men’s families returned home from southern Africa and expressed their dissatisfaction with the ministry’s efforts, amid reports that it had decided to stop funding the search.
A chartered boat carrying eight Taiwanese on a tour of an ocean aquaculture facility off the coast of northeastern Madagascar sank on July 11.
The body of Liu Shou-chih (劉守智) was recovered on July 14, but none of the others have been found.
PERSONNEL
Following the conclusion of the first phase of search operations, the ministry said it would keep in touch with officials in Madagascar and send personnel stationed in South Africa to help the men’s families.
The ministry has spent more than NT$3 million (US$(98,000) to help with the search mission, including arranging for a 10-hour helicopter search, a 22-hour aircraft search and 32-hour search at sea, the statement said.
The ministry said that it had been informed that Madagascar rescue teams have not ended their search for the missing men.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift