The Taipei Economic and Cultural Mission in Ankara is doing everything in its power to ensure that 52 Taiwanese arrested in Turkey for installing hidden video recorders at ATMs would be deported to Taiwan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday.
At a routine news conference in Taipei yesterday morning, ministry spokeswoman Eleanor Wang (王珮玲) said the mission was notified by Turkish police on Monday of the arrest of 52 fraud suspects in the city of Izmir.
“The 52 Taiwanese were apprehended for allegedly placing hidden cameras at ATMs. As of now, it is unclear whether the case also involves Chinese suspects,” Wang said.
Upon learning of the arrest, Representative to Turkey Yaser Cheng (鄭泰祥), along with several staff members, immediately flew to Izmir, where he told the Turkish police that the 52 suspects were Taiwanese, Wang said.
“The mission is doing its best to ensure that the suspects are deported back to Taiwan after following all legal procedures and that they will face prosecution at home,” Wang said.
The apprehension of the 52 has touched a nerve in Taiwan after 77 Taiwanese implicated in similar scams in other nations — 45 in Kenya and 32 in Malaysia — were deported to Beijing instead of Taipei in April.
Critics say the controversial deportations bring into question the effectiveness of the so-called “1992 consensus,” which was often touted by former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) throughout his eight-year term.
The “1992 consensus” — a term former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) admitted making up in 2000 — refers to a tacit understanding between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party that both sides acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
A Central News Agency (CNA) report later yesterday, citing Turkish media, said the 52 Taiwanese were among a group of 81 fraud suspects arrested in Izmir, some of whom are Chinese.
The suspects, including four underaged men and 10 women, targeted Chinese and Taiwanese tourists, stealing their bank details when they used ATMs in Izmir, CNA said.
It is estimated that about 3,000 cards have been copied by the fraud ring, it said.
The group is also suspected of operating a call center to contact victims after they return home to swindle money out of them.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching