A total of 223 Taiwanese who were deported over the past nine months from other nations on suspicion of telecommunications fraud are still being held in China, where they were deported, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday.
The government is seeking to bring back the suspects to face trial in Taiwan, the council said.
The suspects are being held in detention centers across China, the council said, calling on Beijing to uphold its agreements with Taipei on joint efforts to combat cross-border telecoms fraud and to continue the cooperation to protect the rights and interests of people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
Fifty of the suspects were arrested in Kenya in April and August last year and were deported to China, where they are being held at a detention center in Beijing’s Haidian District, the council said.
It said 32 suspects deported from Malaysia in April last year are held at two detention centers in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, while 21 deported from Malaysia in November last year are held at a detention center in Xiangyang, Hubei Province.
Twenty-five suspects deported from Cambodia in June last year are held in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, while 13 who were deported from the same country in September last year are being held at a detention center in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, the council said.
Seventy-eight suspects deported from Armenia in September last year are being held at two detention centers in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, while four suspects deported from Vietnam this month are in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province, it added.
It said the government will stand by its policy regarding cross-border telecoms fraud.
China has claimed that it has a right to try the Taiwanese suspects, as most of the people targeted by the alleged fraud rings were Chinese.
Another reason that Beijing has put forward is the perceived lenience with which other suspects have been treated by Taiwan’s justice system.
Through analyzing fossil evidence, a research team at National Taiwan University (NTU) discovered the largest endemic bird to have lived in Taiwan, naming it Pavo miejue, or extinct peafowl (滅絕孔雀). The Mikado pheasant, which is printed on the back of the NT$1,000 bank note, was previously believed to be the biggest endemic bird to Taiwan. The research team’s findings suggest that Pavo miejue lived during the Pleistocene epoch tens of thousands of years ago. It is the first endemic extinct bird species discovered and formally named in Taiwan. The study was coauthored by NTU Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修),
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