Allowing Chinese law enforcement personnel to be stationed in Taiwan as part of cross-strait efforts to prevent crime is not a finalized plan, although that is what the two sides are working toward, a Crime Investigation Bureau (CIB) official said yesterday.
“So far, we don’t have a concrete plan, but we’re working in that direction,” CIB Crime Investigation Section Chief Chiu Nien-hsing (邱念興) was quoted as saying yesterday in a Central News Agency (CNA) report.
Chiu made the comments in response to a report published by the Chinese-language China Times Weekly magazine on Friday that Chinese law enforcement personnel may soon be allowed to be stationed in Taiwan.
The magazine said China had suggested that law enforcement personnel from both sides of the Strait — Taiwanese police officers and China’s People’s Armed Police — be stationed in each country to strengthen cross-strait cooperation on crime prevention.
The suggestion has already been submitted to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and to the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) for review, and it may be discussed during cross-strait talks to be held at the end of the year, the report said.
The report also said Taiwan had requested that once a suspect wanted by Taiwan is arrested in China, Chinese law enforcement agencies should notify their Taiwanese counterparts within 24 hours.
When contacted by the Taipei Times for comment, CIB spokesman Liu Chung-chih (劉崇智) said it was a complicated issue and the CIB did not have such a plan at present.
“[Allowing Chinese law enforcement personnel to be stationed in Taiwan] is a very complicated issue because it would require laws to be revised and a lot of discussion,” Liu said. “We [the CIB] are only an executing agency, the decision-making power is in the hands of the MAC and other government authorities.”
“I can tell you that we don’t have such a plan at the moment,” he said.
When asked if it would be a future objective, Liu repeated that the CIB did not have such a plan at present.
Although the CIB denied there was any plan, the China Times Weekly report caused uproar on the Internet.
“Let’s wait and see — first it’s the police, next it will be the military,” an anonymous Internet user wrote on an online forum. “Once Chinese police and military can be legally present in Taiwan, it would be like telling the world we’ve been ‘liberated.’”
“Chinese police will soon be allowed to make arrests in Taiwan,” an Internet user with the screen name “cw” said. “Wuerkaixi, Professor Ruan Ming [阮銘], Tibetan dissidents and Taiwanese independence activists will be the first on the list.”
Both Wuerkaixi and Ruan are Chinese dissidents taking refuge in Taiwan.
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