Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Javier Hou (侯清山) yesterday said the ministry takes a positive view of an apology issued by the Malaysian prime minister’s special envoy to east Asia Datuk Seri Tiong King Sing over his nation’s deportation of 32 Taiwanese fraud suspects to Beijing.
“Tiong made the apology yesterday [Sunday] and said he was also astonished by such a procedure. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs feels positively about Tiong’s remarks,” Hou said on the sidelines of a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee in Taipei.
Hou was responding to media queries regarding Tiong’s remarks, made in an interview with the Central News Agency in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, during which the Malaysian politician said it is customary for his government to deport foreign suspects to their home nations.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Tiong said in the interview that he had no prior knowledge of the deportation of the 32 Taiwanese to China on Saturday and that he was “astonished and disappointed” by the incident.
He then apologized and pledged to help rectify the situation in his capacity as the prime minister’s special envoy to East Asia.
The 32 Taiwanese were among a group of 52 Taiwanese arrested in Malaysia last month on suspicion of participating in a telecoms fraud.
The other 20 suspects were sent back to Taiwan on April 15 at Taipei’s request, but were released shortly afterward due to a lack of evidence.
Nevertheless, prosecutors on April 21 detained 18 of the suspects incommunicado and restricted the remaining two suspects from leaving the nation.
Turning to the government’s deployment of two patrol vessels on Sunday on a month-long mission to protect Taiwanese fishermen operating in international waters near the Okinotori atoll, Hou said the government would continue to try to handle situations at sea with discretion and to prevent them from escalating into conflicts.
“We urge both parties to resort to peaceful means to address the issue,” Hou said.
Asked how the two patrol boats would respond in the event of an attack from Japanese coast guard vessels, such as by water cannons, Hou said he would not answer hypothetical questions and reiterated his hopes for a peaceful resolution.
The deployment of the two patrol vessels came amid growing tensions between Taipei and Tokyo over the latter’s confiscation of a Taiwanese fishing boat, the Tung Sheng Chi No. 16, about 150 nautical miles (277.8km) east-southeast of the uninhabited atoll on Monday last week.
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
A former television news host and six military personnel — active and retired — have been indicted on espionage charges, Kaohsiung prosecutors said yesterday. Lin Chen-you (林宸佑), a former CTi News host and YouTuber, last year allegedly made videos at the direction of a Chinese agent criticizing the Democratic Progressive Party’s recall campaign, the Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office told a news conference in Kaohsiung. He allegedly received 4,325 tether coins for the videos from an unidentified person surnamed Huang (黃), believed to be an agent of a hostile foreign power, they said. Lin, also known as Ma Te (馬德), has a show named
RSS