Sources have shed light on the details of the arrest of a Taiwanese diplomat in the US on Thursday last week for alleged labor violations.
According to sources, the FBI’s arrest of 64 year-old Jacqueline Liu (劉姍姍), the director-general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in Kansas City, Missouri, was not carried out at either her residence or her office.
Sources said Liu was arrested coming out of a women’s restroom in the building that houses the TECO.
Liu came into the office on Thursday last week as usual and was arrested by FBI agents when she walked out of the restroom, where she was getting ready to leave for a social event arranged by the US government, sources said, adding that Liu was read her rights by the FBI agents and was immediately led away in handcuffs. Liu did not even have time to return to her office to get her glasses, the sources said.
At the time nobody at the office knew that Liu had been arrested until the FBI later notified an official at the representative office whose mobile phone number was given to FBI agents by Liu after her arrest, sources said.
Meanwhile, a TECO official who was already at the social event to meet up with Liu waited in vain for her to arrive and also learned about her arrest upon receiving a telephone call from the FBI.
The TECO official then immediately notified the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, sources said.
Taiwan feels that the FBI took inappropriate measures when arresting Liu and the ministry has criticized the FBI’s actions as being “rude.”
Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) gave orders at midnight Taiwan time on Friday last week for Bruce Linghu (令狐榮達), director-general of the ministry’s Department of North American Affairs, to call the American Institute in Taiwan to confer Taiwan’s grave concerns and to protest the arrest, sources said.
Yang also gave orders to Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Shen Lyu-shun (沈呂巡) to summon American Institute in Taiwan Deputy Director Eric Hubert Madison on Friday morning last week to convey to him the government’s stance on the matter.
Translated by Jake Chung, staff writer
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
IN FULL SWING: Recall drives against lawmakers in Hualien, Taoyuan and Hsinchu have reached the second-stage threshold, the campaigners said Campaigners in a recall petition against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) in Taichung yesterday said their signature target is within sight, and that they need a big push to collect about 500 more signatures from locals to reach the second-stage threshold. Recall campaigns against KMT lawmakers Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) and Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) are also close to the 10 percent threshold, and campaigners are mounting a final push this week. They need about 800 signatures against Chiang and about 2,000 against Yang. Campaigners seeking to recall Lo said they had reached the threshold figure over the
RSS