Seventeen of the 148 Vietnamese tourists who disappeared shortly after arriving in Taiwan last week have been located, the National Immigration Agency (NIA) said yesterday.
As of midnight on Thursday, 17 of the missing tourists, who arrived in four groups in Kaohsiung and Tainan on Friday last week and Sunday, were found, while the other 131 remained unaccounted for, the agency said in a statement.
The 17 were found in Chiayi, Nantou, Changhua and Hsinchu counties, in addition to Taoyuan and New Taipei City, the agency said, adding that initial investigations showed that they had left their tours to meet friends or relatives, or to look for a job.
Photo: CNA
A task force set up by the NIA and National Police Agency is investigating if crime syndicates, including traffickers, were behind the disappearances, the statement said.
The Vietnamese were visiting Taiwan under a government initiative launched in November 2015 that allows electronic visa application for tour groups of at least five people traveling on Indonesian, Vietnamese, Burmese, Cambodian, Laotian or Indian passports.
Group tourists are eligible to make such applications as long as they are organized by “quality travel agencies” recognized by the Tourism Bureau or company-sponsored groups.
Premier William Lai (賴清德) yesterday called for a thorough review of the program under which more than 500 Vietnamese arriving on tourist visas have gone missing.
The Vietnamese National Administration of Tourism has suspended the license of International Holidays Trading Travel, the agency that handled the 148 tourists’ visa applications, and has begun investigating the case, Vietnamese media reported.
In related news, the Executive Yuan yesterday named National Police Agency Deputy Director-General Chiu Feng-kuang (邱豐光) as the new NIA head and a takeover ceremony took place later in the day.
Minister of the Interior Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) in a statement praised the four-decade law enforcement veteran for his contributions to keeping society safe.
With Chiu in charge, the NIA would continue to safeguard the nation’s borders and security, respect all cultures and protect the rights of migrants, Hsu added.
The position was vacated by Jeff Yang (楊家駿) on Dec. 12, when he was transferred to the position of senior counselor at the NIA after allegedly misappropriating funds.
Yang has denied the allegations and is under investigation.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift