Nantou County authorities on Tuesday raided a hideout in Jhushan Township (竹山) and detained six Vietnamese who had allegedly been poaching protected trees in the surrounding mountainous area.
National Immigration Agency (NIA) officials said that after receiving information about a group of runaway migrant workers engaged in illegal activities, they coordinated with local police and Nantou’s Military Police Command to conduct the operation.
“All six people arrested were found to be Vietnamese, led by a man surnamed Nguyen. They were all wanted by authorities, as they had run away from their registered work contracts and were hiding from their employers,” NIA Special Operation Corps in Nantou head Chen Chieh-chang (陳介章) said.
Chen said the six had been cutting down protected trees, which they trimmed down to wooden blocks to sell to criminal organizations.
Authorities searching the hideout found 23 blocks of Taiwan cypress, three blocks of red cedar, wood carving equipment and other tools, he said.
“We also found what is suspected to be amphetamine powder and drug paraphernalia, along with NT$33,000 in cash,” Chen said.
The suspects attempted to escape by jumping through windows and breaking out the backdoor, but police, having staked out the location, surrounded and apprehended the six, he said.
Nantou prosecutors have been questioning the suspects to determine the ringleader.
Prosecutors said they intend to press charges on violations of the Forestry Act (森林法), the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法) and the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act (毒品危害防制條例).
Forestry Bureau official Lee Yen-shou (李炎壽), who is head of the Nantou Forest District Office, said the valuable protected species have been threatened by forest poachers, known in Taiwan as “mountain rats” (山老鼠).
“Over the past few years, we have seen a surge in migrant workers who escape their legal work contracts and increasingly find work as mountain rats, plundering forests and conducting other illegal activities in mountainous areas,” Lee said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS