A pending court ruling on the fate of five Taiwanese nationals detained in Kenya over alleged telecommunication fraud has raised tensions between envoys from Taipei and Beijing, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General Chen Chun-shen (陳俊賢) said that Taiwanese and Chinese envoys were seen engaged in a heated exchange of words outside a Kenyan court on Tuesday last week.
Chen said the confrontation occurred after the court postponed its verdict on the five suspects — who are at risk of being deported to China — to Aug. 23. It was the fifth postponement since the case was first heard in Nairobi in April.
“A Chinese embassy official surnamed Kao (高), in the company of two fraud victims and a dozen Chinese officials, asked to talk to Taiwanese Representative to South Africa John Chen (陳忠) after the court session,” Chen Chun-shen said.
Chen Chun-shen said Kao advised John Chen not to waste taxpayers’ money on the protection of “bad guys,” to which the Taiwanese envoy said the difference between Taipei’s and Beijing’s judicial system is that it is the government’s job to prove a person’s guilt rather than the defendant’s responsibility to prove their innocence.
John Chen also shrugged off Kao’s claims that he has proof that the Taiwanese fraud suspects had preyed on Chinese, saying that such evidence, if any, should be handed to the Kenyan police or Taiwan’s judicial authority in accordance with the 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), Chen Chun-shen said.
“John Chen then reiterated his strong opposition to Taiwanese being forcibly deported to China,” Chen Chun-shen said, adding that the pair’s heated exchange attracted the attention of local media and their quarrel was reported in the Nairobi Times on Saturday.
The five Taiwanese are among a group of 77 fraud suspects — 48 Chinese, 28 Taiwanese and one Thai — detained by Kenyan police in November 2014 and charged with engaging in unlicensed telecommunications activities, using radio equipment without a license and organized crime.
Twenty-three of the Taiwanese were deported to Beijing following their acquittal by a court on April 5.
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