National Immigration Agency (NIA) officials yesterday said they have broken up a child-smuggling ring where forged documents were allegedly used to bring Vietnamese children into Taiwan to work on farms in the nation’s central and southern regions.
Investigators found that at least 17 Vietnamese children were involved in the case.
Eleven of them, three boys and eight girls between the ages of five and 13, had been brought into the nation to live with people posing as their parents, they said.
Photo courtesy of the Yunlin District Prosecutors’ Office
“We arrested 17 couples, comprised of Taiwanese men and Vietnamese women, during the raids over the past few days,” NIA Taichung City Specialized Operation Brigade Captain Lin Jui-lin (林瑞麟) said.
Lin said the children were brought to Taiwan using fake documents to be exploited as child labor, but the suspects denied the accusations.
The investigation was handed over to the Yunlin District Prosecutors’ Office, where officials intended to press charges of breaches of the Human Trafficking Prevention Act (人口販運防制法) and the Passport Statute Enforcement Regulations (護照條例施行細則).
Photo: CNA
NIA officials said the people obtained forged birth certificates produced in Vietnam at a cost of US$3,000 to US$7,000 each.
They then used the forged documents to apply for Republic of China passports for the children at Taiwan’s representative office in Ho Chi Minh City, Lin said.
Investigators found that most of the children were actually the children of the relatives or neighbors of the Vietnamese women in Taiwan.
Photo: Copy by Yang Cheng-chun, Taipei Times
Some of the couples told police that the children were being taken care of, denying accusations of child labor.
Lin said that some of the children were working on the farms and tea plantations owned by the couples, adding that one of the girls has been attending elementary school in Taiwan.
One of the couples said they will fight the allegations, as the NIA said it would repatriate the children.
“In Vietnam, these kids live in poverty and cannot eat three meals per day. There is no work for them to earn money for their family. Here in Taiwan, they say they are happy to live with their aunts and uncles, because they can help with farm work and they eat well. The kids have said they want to stay in Taiwan, and they do not want to go back to Vietnam,” one of the couples said, according to a report by the Chinese-language Apple Daily.
“The kids are the relatives of the couples who know their biological parents in Vietnam. They have agreed to send the children to Taiwan to be looked after by us and other families, because the conditions here are much better than in Vietnam,” the couple said, according to the report.
“They also want the children to become Taiwanese citizens, so they can have better lives when they grow up,” they added.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS