Chinese citizens have apparently devised a new way of sneaking into Taiwan by using forged birth certificates and identification cards issued by the government of Matsu, according to Taoyuan district prosecutors.
The prosecutors said they believe that more than 100 Chinese citizens have entered Taiwan over the past year via Matsu by using falsified documents.
Prosecutor Hsu Ping-wen (許炳文) said that after months of investigations and fact-finding trips to Matsu, the Taoyuan District Prosecutors Office has concluded that an organized crime ring is behind the Matsu-Taiwan illegal-immigration operations.
The office found that former People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers and Chinese public security officers are among those who entered Taiwan under this formula over the past year.
Mindful of the potential threat to Taiwan's national security of "human cargo" smuggling, military intelligence authorities have also pitched in with related investigations, fearing that former PLA and Chinese public-security members might be conducting intelligence-gathering operations in Taiwan.
The newly arrived Matsu residents began to raise suspicions among Taoyuan prosecutors last year after the prosecutors discovered that such people "got lost" immediately after entering Taiwan, had no relatives in Taiwan and were unable to be tracked down by local police.
In addition, the prosecutors found that people named as guardians on the guarantee certificates for the newly arrived Matsu immigrants did not actually know them.
Hsu, who made several fact-finding trips to Matsu, said he believes that Taoyuan residents Liu Tseng-tung and Liu Chien-wen were members of a crime ring that began to smuggle illegal immigrants via Matsu in May 2000 after the Taiwan government initiated a policy making it more convenient for Matsu residents to resettle in Taiwan permanently.
Under the policy, Matsu residents are allowed to emigrate to Taiwan as long as they can produce their birth certificates, identification cards and a guarantee document carrying the names of three neighbors on Matsu who can attest to the fact that the applicants are native to the island.
The two Lius and the smuggling ring they allegedly belong to are believed to have brought more than 100 people from Matsu to Taiwan.
The ring reportedly charged each person between NT$120,000 and NT$160,000 for providing them with fake identification papers, birth documents and guarantee papers.
In his interviews with the Matsu residents whose names have been used on the fake guarantee papers, Hsu found that none of them knew the people they had endorsed.
The guarantors were usually paid NT$5,000 to NT$10,000 for their signatures, Hsu said.
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