The Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) yesterday said it had broken up a human-trafficking ring that used the passports of Taiwanese Aboriginal children to smuggle Chinese minors into France.
In June, the National Immigration Agency (NIA) made a similar breakthrough involving another group that used the same method to traffic Chinese youths to the US.
The CIB yesterday said it received a tip that a man surnamed Liao (廖) and the criminal group he headed had successfully smuggled Chinese minors to the US several times.
After the US strengthened its visa application policy last month by requiring that all persons under the age of 14 go to the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) for a face-to-face visa interview, the group shifted its operations to France, the bureau said.
The CIB said the traffickers would pay anywhere between NT$5,000 to NT$10,000 for the personal information of Aboriginal children in Hualien and would then use the documents to apply for authentic Republic of China (ROC) passports and foreign visas.
Currently, the Bureau of Consular Affairs does not require people to apply for a passport in person.
After obtaining an ROC passport and a visa to a third country, the traffickers would bring the travel documents to Hong Kong to meet up with Chinese counterparts who brought minors from China. Together, the children and their escorts would fly to either the US, France, Mexico or other countries from Hong Kong using the passports.
The CIB said the crime syndicates had bought the personal information of 45 Aboriginal children and trafficked 37 Chinese minors to the US and other countries.
The crime ring earns US$70,000 for each child it smuggles. The CIB estimated that Liao’s group had made a profit of more than NT$80 million (US$2.4 million).
Together with Hualien police, the CIB arrested members of the group at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on Thursday. Police also found the members had a large quantity of fraudulent passports and counterfeit NIA immigration custom stamps.
The 2009 annual Trafficking in Persons report published in June by the US Department of Homeland Security said that Taiwan remained a Tier 2 country.
Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan all received the same ranking, while China has stayed on the Tier 2 watch list for five years running.
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