INDONESIA
Fishing labor to continue
Indonesia is to continue to send fishermen to work on Taiwanese vessels, according to an Agency of Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers official. Agency deputy head Agusdin Subiantoro was responding to reports that Indonesia had decided to stop sending fishermen to Taiwan. He said on Sunday that the suspension was a previous notification, which the Indonesian government would soon lift. Jakarta is now preparing to resume sending fishermen to Taiwan, he added. Agency head Nustron Wahid agreed to lift the previous suspension and continue to send fishermen to Taiwan in the wake of protests by brokerage firms. Taiwanese media reports said that many brokerage firms received official notification on March 16 that Indonesia would stop sending fishermen to Taiwan in a bid to upgrade the protection of Indonesian fishermen working in the nation.
CRIME
Shootout suspect killed
A shootout between police and drug suspects on Monday evening in Jhubei City (竹北), Hsinchu County, has left one suspect dead and two policemen injured, according to authorities. Accompanied by coast guard officials, several police officers from Taichung were attempting to arrest a 40-year-old man wanted for drug violations in Jhubei when the man and his accomplice fired gunshots at the police, according to law enforcement officials. The man, surnamed Hung (洪), was hit by a bullet in the exchange, but still tried to escape by jumping out of the building he was in. He was detained and taken to a hospital, but was pronounced dead on arrival, police said. One police officer was shot in his arm, while another sprained his foot during the shootout, but their injuries are not life-threatening, police said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift