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
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