The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday urged the Canadian government to ensure a better attitude among immigration officers at its airports.
The ministry made the call in the wake of an incident in which a Taiwanese woman alleged mistreatment by Canadian immigration officials.
Lee Chun-hua (李春花), a 50-year-old from Taichung who does not speak English, was questioned for five hours at Vancouver International Airport on March 10. She was eventually deported and her visa revoked.
“We regard this as an isolated case, but we’ve asked the Canadian government to review the way its immigration officers question [visitors] and make improvements in that regard,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) told a press conference yesterday.
Asked to elaborate on whether Lee was mistreated by Canadian officers, as she alleges, Yang said: “Based on Lee’s complaint, if what she said is true, there is a lot of room for improvement on the Canadian side. That’s why we made our demand.”
Immediately after the press conference, the Presidential Office issued a statement saying that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had talked to Yang by telephone and instructed the ministry to tell Canada it must take Taiwan’s concerns over the matter seriously.
While asking the ministry to gain a better understanding of what happened to Lee, the statement also instructed officials to take action to ensure that Taiwanese citizens are treated with proper respect and their rights protected overseas.
The ministry should ask that Canada account for the incident, the statement said, adding that “If Canada fails to give a rational explanation for this, MOFA should lodge an official protest.”
Yang, however, did not relay Canada’s explanation of the incident, nor did he answer a question on whether Canada had apologized to Lee.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS