The government is to send an official delegation to China on Monday to meet with Chinese authorities over the criminal investigation of 54 Taiwanese suspects deported from Kenya and detained in Beijing on charges of engaging in telephone fraud.
Executive Yuan spokesperson Sun Lih-chyun (孫立群) said the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) held a meeting yesterday morning and decided that a special task force would be set up for the Kenya case and that a team consisting officials from the MAC, the Ministry of Justice, the Straits Exchange Foundation and the Criminal Investigation Bureau would leave for China on Monday.
“The aim [of the trip] is to provide assistance to the families [of the detained Taiwanese] and to set up a general mechanism for cross-strait cooperation on clamping down on crimes that involve a third [country],” Sun said.
Meanwhile, Minister of Justice Luo Ying-shay (羅瑩雪) said that talks had been under way with Chinese government agencies to work out details of the Taiwanese delegation’s involvement.
“The talks have been ongoing for several days. Then officials from China’s Ministry of Public Security contacted us late on Thursday night, and they agreed Taiwan’s side should organize a delegation to join in the judicial investigation into this case,” Luo said.
Deputy Minister of Justice Chen Ming-tang (陳明堂) added that the priority is to negotiate with Chinese officials to ensure Taiwanese lawyers and judiciary officials are present when Chinese authorities conduct questioning and apply other judicial procedures to the Taiwanese.
Chen said the delegation, composed of at least one prosecutor and judiciary officials, along with law enforcement officials and representatives for cross-strait negotiations, hopes to be able to visit the 54 Taiwanese, as well as seek to obtain evidence of the suspects’ alleged involvement in criminal activities, and put in requests to repatriate them for judicial investigation in Taiwan.
“However, we do not know if all our objectives can be achieved. It will depend on how the negotiations progress, and so we have to negotiate our requests with Chinese authorities in a step-by-step manner,” he said.
Legislators had approved a resolution on Thursday to demand that lawyers must be present when Chinese judicial officials question the Taiwanese suspects.
Chen said the Ministry of Justice would fax the legislators’ resolution to China so Chinese authorities can understand the requests, “but we also have to respect the judicial process of China’s justice system.”
Meanwhile, Luo spoke yesterday on the controversy during a question-and-answer session at the legislature on Thursday, in what was described as verbal skirmishes and heated clashes involving legislators over a perceived betrayal of the principles of national sovereignty and legal rights protection over the Kenya deportation affair.
Luo said she was just speaking her mind.
“In the past, I tried to be tolerant and not respond in such a direct, cutting manner when grilled by legislators. It was for the sake of preserving the fiscal budget allocation for the Ministry of Justice,” she said.
“Now I am in the bottom of the ninth inning and ready to finish up the game, so I don’t have to hold back,” she said, referring to the end of her term on May 20.
Additional reporting by Alison Hsiao
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
A cold surge advisory was today issued for 18 cities and counties across Taiwan, with temperatures of below 10°C forecast during the day and into tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. New Taipei City, Taipei, Taoyuan and Hsinchu, Miaoli and Yilan counties are expected to experience sustained temperatures of 10°C or lower, the CWA said. Temperatures are likely to temporarily drop below 10°C in most other areas, except Taitung, Pingtung, Penghu and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties, CWA data showed. The cold weather is being caused by a strong continental cold air mass, combined with radiative cooling, a process in which heat escapes from
RSS