China and Taiwan should hold talks as soon as possible over establishing a way to effectively combat telecom scams aimed at Chinese, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday.
On Wednesday — five days after the event — China informed the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) that 78 Taiwanese, along with 51 Chinese, were taken to Guangzhou, China, from Armenia on charges of being involved in a telecom scam that defrauded Chinese, the bureau said.
MAC Deputy Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said the council has lodged a protest with China and urged Beijing to return the Taiwanese suspects to Taiwan to be investigated and to stand trial if warranted.
Chiu also urged China to allow family members of the Taiwanese suspects to visit them in Guangzhou detention centers, in accordance with the 2009 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).
Only through cross-strait cooperation can cross-border crimes be effectively managed, he said, adding that Taiwan and China have since 2011 collaborated successfully to fight crime.
According to the bureau, it was informed by China of the arrival of the 78 Taiwanese suspects in Guangzhou at 2pm on Wednesday, but they arrived there on Sept. 2.
Chinese media reported that the Armenia-based 129-member operation was the largest alleged telecom fraud ring targeting Chinese ever uncovered overseas.
The ring targeted Chinese in more than 10 provinces and cities, the reports said.
A police force of more than 300 was mobilized to repatriate them to China.
A senior bureau officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Chinese police used to routinely inform their Taiwanese counterparts of the names of Taiwanese suspects and detail evidence of any suspected crimes.
However, such cross-strait cooperation was suspended after China cut off official channels of communication with Taiwan following the election of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
Legislators of both the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) expressed hope that the cross-strait communication mechanism would be re-established to facilitate the fight against cross-border crimes.
Taiwan should seek to build trust with China by assuring it that Taiwanese convicted of telecom crimes targeting Chinese would be severely punished in Taiwan, DPP Legislator Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said.
Taiwanese fraudsters are swindling money out of innocent people all across the world, Lin said, adding that “it’s a national shame,” and the government should “do something about it.”
KMT Legislator Lee Yen-hsiu (李彥秀) said that with the current impasse, Taiwanese do not even know if the suspects will get a fair trial in China.
“How much longer will such a deadlock continue?” Lee asked.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,