The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday said that its efforts to secure the deportations of Taiwanese fraud suspects held overseas back to their homeland — as opposed to China — are not aimed at “protecting the bad guys,” but rather at defending the safety and human rights of the millions of Taiwanese who travel abroad each year.
“The ministry will not protect any bad guys, but in this case, the suspects were acquitted by a local court [in Kenya] and ordered deported back to Taiwan,” Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General Chen Chun-shen (陳俊賢) told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
Chen said that if the ministry did not endeavor to protect the five Taiwanese who were deported to China on Sunday after being acquitted by a Kenyan court, it would create a dangerous precedent that might encourage Beijing to abduct any Taiwanese suspected of wrongdoing anywhere in the world.
It could happen to anyone, including you and me, and lead to a severe infringement of Taiwanese people’s human rights, Chen said.
“Given that there are millions of Taiwanese who travel overseas each year ... the ministry has to safeguard their safety and human rights while they are abroad,” Chen said.
Chen made the remarks one day after the ministry criticized Kenya and China for disregarding a local court’s not-guilty verdict on Friday and deporting the five Taiwanese to Beijing instead of Taipei.
However, the ministry’s campaign to stop the deportation has been criticized by some Taiwanese commentators, who say that such efforts to protect “criminals” are a waste of energy, resources and manpower
Chen said that while the government lost its struggle with Beijing this time, the case has attracted international media coverage and is expected to draw attention to “the unfair treatment Taiwanese have been subjected to for a long time.”
“I believe the international community cannot understand or accept [Beijing’s action of] blatantly abducting people who have just been acquitted by a court,” Chen said, adding that the case proves that civilized actions are no match for peremptoriness.
Chen added that Beijing’s victory came at a dear cost, as its indifference to the rule of law and human rights had further tarnished its international image.
Asked whether the Kenyan authorities have offered an explanation for the unlawful deportation, Chen said he believed the Kenyan government must have been torn between succumbing to mounting pressure from China and bowing to international public opinion; otherwise, it would not have postponed issuing a verdict on the five Taiwanese five times since April.
“We might not be able to associate Taiwan’s mature rule-of-law culture with the Kenyan police force’s disregard of its own country’s legal system, but I believe Nairobi must have felt very conflicted because the pressure from China could be both political and economic,” Chen said.
UNDER WATCH: Taiwan will have to establish a standardized nucleic acid testing method to identify the virus and monitor its spread, the CDC said The Langya henipavirus, which can be transmitted from animals to humans, has been discovered in China, with 35 human infections reported so far, Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said, adding that the nation would establish a nucleic acid testing method to identify the virus. A study titled “A Zoonotic Henipavirus in Febrile Patients in China” that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday said that a new henipavirus associated with a fever-causing human illness was identified in China. The study said an investigation identified 35 patients with acute infection of the Langya henipavirus in China’s Shandong
‘ORDINARY PEOPLE’: A man watching Taiwanese military drills said that there would be nothing anyone could do if the situation escalates in the Taiwan Strait Many people in Taiwan look upon China’s military exercises over the past week with calm resignation, doubting that war is imminent and if anything, feeling pride in their nation’s determination to defend itself. After a visit to Taiwan last week by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, China has sent ships and aircraft across an unofficial buffer between Taiwan and China’s coast and missiles over Taipei and into waters surrounding the nation since Thursday last week. However, Rosa Chang, proudly watching her son take part in Taiwanese military exercises that included dozens of howitzers firing shells into the Taiwan Strait off
BILINGUAL PLAN: The 17 educators were recruited under a program that seeks to empower Taiwanese, the envoy to the Philippines said The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines on Thursday hosted a send-off event for the first group of English-language teachers from the country who were recruited for a Ministry of Education-initiated program to advance bilingual education in Taiwan. The 14 teachers and three teaching assistants are part of the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which aims to help find English-language instructors for Taiwan’s public elementary and junior-high schools, the office said. Seventy-seven teachers and 11 teaching assistants from the Philippines have been hired to teach in Taiwan in the coming school year, office data showed. Among the first group is 57-year-old
ON THE ALERT: The daily caseload will rise, but it is not likely to reach the level of the previous peak of about 80,000 to 90,000, the deputy minister of health said Reporting nine new local cases of the Omicron subvariant BA.5 of SARS-CoV-2, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday said that the BA.5 strain is gradually spreading in northern Taiwan and was expected to cause a wave of infections in one or two weeks. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Chou Jih-haw (周志浩), head of the CECC’s disease surveillance division, said 15,206 new local COVID-19 infections, 206 imported cases and 26 deaths were confirmed. The local caseload was the lowest in 100 days — since 15,033 cases were reported on April 30 — and the number of deaths was the lowest in
RSS