Taipei will express concern to Washington over a travel ban on three senior AU Optronics (AUO) executives, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said yesterday.
Harry Tseng (曾厚仁), director-general of the Department of North American Affairs, said Taiwan hoped the US executive branch would take a “flexible” approach and consider lifting the ban on the trio, in line with the principle of presumed innocence.
AUO vice chairman Chen Hsuan-bin (陳炫彬), CEO Chen Lai-juh (陳來助) and board member and Qisda chief executive Hui Hsiung (熊暉) were recently ordered by a US judge to surrender their passports and not travel outside California’s northern district without court permission.
A San Francisco court in June indicted the Houston-based subsidiary of AUO and six company officials, including the trio, on charges of conspiring to fix LCD panel prices from September 2001 through December 2006, an allegation made by the US Department of Justice.
“They went to the US voluntarily to appear in court, meaning they will not hide themselves. Given that they have approached the case sincerely, what’s the point of barring them from leaving [the US]?” Tseng asked.
Should the Department of Justice refuse to talk with Taipei, the ministry would consider raising the matter with the American Institute in Taiwan, he said.
“As a foreign government, there is little room to maneuver in a case under judicial review and the same applies to the US’ executive branch. Even so, we will do our best to communicate with the US government to see if we can change the situation,” Tseng said.
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