Mainland Affairs Council Minister Andrew Hsia (夏立言) yesterday urged China to present concrete evidence backing figures it released to demonstrate the prevalence of Taiwanese-orchestrated telecommunications fraud, while calling for a new round of negotiations on a cross-strait pact to jointly fight crime.
Hsia made the remarks on the sidelines of a meeting of the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee, which invited him speak and answer questions about Kenya’s deportation of 45 Taiwanese from Nairobi to Beijing on Friday last week and on Tuesday.
“I have seen the frightening numbers of [telecom scam] victims published by Chinese authorities. However, we hope they can present some evidence to back the figures so that they are not just conjecture,” Hsia said.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
China is also urged to show evidence that its forcible seizure of the Taiwanese conformed with procedural justice, Hsia said.
Hsia was referring to a statement issued by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office on Wednesday, in which the office justified the deportation of the Taiwanese as an attempt to safeguard the rights and interests of Chinese who have affected by telecom fraud orchestrated by Taiwanese.
Twenty-three of the deported Taiwanese were acquitted by a Kenyan court on Friday last week in a 2014 telecom fraud case, while the other 22 Taiwanese were among a group of 41 suspects arrested by Kenyan police on the same day.
According to a statement, the 23 acquitted Taiwanese were involved in a telecom fraud ring that swindled more than 100 Chinese by pretending to be Chinese public security officials, making more than 6 million yuan (US$925,198).
“It is estimated that Taiwanese fraudsters have made more than 10 billion yuan annually from Chinese in recent years… These scams have bankrupted many families and corporations, inflicting tremendous physical and mental pain on victims. Some even committed suicide as a result,” the statement said, calling for compassion.
Expressing confidence that the Kenya incident would result in better cross-strait agreements about joint crime-fighting, Hsia said the Philippines’ controversial deportation of 14 Taiwanese fraud suspects to China in 2011 also created an unpleasant cross-strait conflict at the time, but both Taipei and Beijing were able to reach an agreement following five months of negotiations.
The agreement, reached under the framework of the 2009 Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement (海峽兩岸共同打擊犯罪及司法互助協議), said that Taiwanese and Chinese who commit wrongdoings in a foreign nation should be deported to their respective countries.
“Their failure to honor the agreement this time was probably due to the emergence of new types of fraud. With the number of fraudsters and victims on the rise, we hope to engage in further talks to determine whether we need to step up our crime-fighting efforts,” Hsia said.
Hsia said that whether Taiwan should impose more stringent penalties for fraud was an issue worthy of serious consideration.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
The Republic of China Army Command yesterday relieved Kinmen Defense Battalion commander after authorities indicted the officer on charges connected to using methamphetamine. The Kinmen District Prosecutors’ Office on Wednesday detained Colonel He (何) after the Coast Guard linked him to drug shipments and proceeded to charge him yesterday for using and possessing crystal meth. The man was released on a NT$50,000 bail and banned from leaving Kinmen, the office said. Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Chen Chien-yi (陳建義) told a news conference yesterday that He has been removed and another officer is taking over the unit as the acting commander. The military
RSS