The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday released an open letter that Taiwan’s Representative to South Africa John Chen (陳忠) wrote to Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Foreign Affairs Amina Mohamed, in a last-ditch effort to prevent the deportation to China of five Taiwanese acquitted of fraud, saying Nairobi had succumbed to Beijing’s pressure.
Less than two hours after the deportation occurred at 11:30pm in Kenya on Sunday, the ministry issued a statement lodging a stern protest over the Kenyan police’s disregard of a local court’s decision to acquit the five Taiwanese of telecoms fraud charges and order their deportation back to Taipei.
On the same aircraft heading to China were 35 Chinese who were found not guilty in the same case on Friday.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The ministry said that since the acquittal of the five Taiwanese on Friday, staff members from the Taipei Liaison Office in the Republic of South Africa had repeatedly demanded that Kenyan police honor the court’s verdict and had sought assistance from foreign media and international human rights groups.
“We regret that Kenyan authorities still succumbed to pressure from China and forcibly sent the five Taiwanese suspects to Beijing,” the ministry said.
The ministry subsequently published an open letter addressed to Mohamed that was written by Chen on Saturday, when China reportedly arranged for the deportation of the Taiwanese.
In the letter, Chen requested that the Kenyan government abide by the ruling issued by its own court, which states that “the accused persons be repatriated back to their countries” and specifies that the five Taiwanese must be deported to Taipei.
“I strongly urged Kenya authorities, with due respect to rules of law, to follow and implement the above-mentioned order by releasing the five Taiwan nationals and sending them back to Taiwan,” Chen wrote.
According to Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General Chen Chun-shen (陳俊賢), John Chen and a Ministry of Justice-affiliated secretary had been waiting around-the-clock outside a local police station where the five Taiwanese suspects had been detained for three consecutive days since the issuance of the court’s verdict.
“After learning that China was planning to deport the Taiwanese suspects to Beijing on Saturday, John Chen immediately rushed to the Kenyan airport to submit the court ruling to an airport police officer, who promptly notified the relevant agencies,” Chen Chun-shen said.
Chen Chun-shen said that although John Chen’s attempts to prevent the deportation were unsuccessful, he held a news conference at the airport shortly after the five Taiwanese were flown to China to accuse Kenyan authorities of violating human rights.
“This case is just an exemplification of the famous saying: ‘When a scholar meets a solider, reason no longer applies.’ They [Kenyan police] did not listen to reason, nor did they care about court rulings or the international media,” Chen Chun-shen said.
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