President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that the country was in the process of signing extradition treaties with Washington and Beijing, adding that he hoped other countries would follow suit.
In light of difficulties in bringing suspects to trial, Ma said Taiwan was negotiating with Washington on signing an extradition treaty. The country also intends to sign an agreement with Beijing modeled on that signed with the US, he said.
If all goes well, Ma said he hoped the country could subsequently ink extradition pacts with other countries.
Ma made the remarks while addressing the annual conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) in the Asia-Pacific region at the Grand Hotel yesterday morning.
Ma said Taiwan is not a member of the International Criminal Police Organization and has only 23 diplomatic allies. By hosting the IACP conference, the country hoped to promote exchanges with other countries and increase the ability to investigate and prevent international crimes, he said.
At a different setting yesterday, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said that extradition of criminals would be placed on the agenda of the next cross-strait talks scheduled for the first half of the year.
MAC Deputy Minister Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) said the issue, along with computer hacking, would be included in the meeting between Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and his Chinese counterpart, Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林).
Hopefully, both sides could sign an agreement and lay the foundation for future cooperation in this regard, he said.
Liu said that under the “Kinmen Agreement,” both sides regularly “exchange information” and “arrange for” the return of criminals wanted by either side via the International Committee of the Red Cross. While such arrangements were made on a case-by-case basis and had limited effect, Liu said both sides hoped to expand the agreement to cover not only the extradition of wanted criminals but also regular judicial assistance and exchanges of evidence.
Regarding hackers, Liu said that such an issue, like that of extradition, will “definitely be on the agenda” of the next Chiang-Chen meeting. As such a crime is committed with computers, both sides could establish Internet police and deal with the matter under the framework of cross-strait joint crime prevention.
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:
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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