The legislature has passed an amendment to grant lenient treatment or even pardons to double agents who turn themselves in, following one of the nation’s worst espionage cases in decades, a lawmaker said on Monday.
Under current regulations, Taiwanese agents who spy for China or another foreign country face up to life imprisonment even if they surrender to the authorities, which is a major disincentive to those who regret their betrayal and want to make amends.
The amendment was approved by the legislature last week, a little more than three months after Taiwan’s military arrested a general on charges of spying for China.
Under the amendment, agents recruited by other countries and “the enemy” would have their sentence reduced or would be pardoned if their reporting to the authorities could prevent damage to Taiwan’s security or interests.
“The recent major espionage cases ... have underscored the shortcomings of the existing law,” Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方), who initiated the legal revision, said in a statement.
Military prosecutors last month indicted Major General Lo Hsien-che (羅賢哲) and said they would seek a life sentence for him.
Lo, a former head of the Army’s telecommunications and electronic information department, was accused of spying and taking bribes from China starting in 2004.
Lo, who has been detained since February, is accused of falling for a honey trap set by a female Chinese agent while stationed in Thailand between 2002 and 2005, media reports have said. The 51-year-old reportedly started to collect secrets for her in 2004 in return for about US$1 million from China, but still managed to pass repeated loyalty checks and was promoted to major-general in 2008.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS