Presidential Office spokesman Charles Chen (陳以信) yesterday downplayed criticism that the office’s attitude toward Malaysia’s deportation of 32 Taiwanese fraud suspects to China had been a flip-flop, saying the change was prompted by a new development late on Saturday.
“The Executive Yuan issued a [second] news release at about 11pm on Saturday, saying that China had sent a formal letter inviting us to dispatch a delegation there to jointly handle the Malaysian and the Kenyan cases,” Chen said.
After the Presidential Office was made aware of the new development, which the government deemed as in conformity with the 2009 Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement (海峽兩岸共同打擊犯罪及司法互助協議), it took a positive view of the matter instead, Chen added.
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 detained 18 of them incommunicado on April 21 and restricted the remaining two from leaving the nation.
A total of 45 Taiwanese fraud suspects were also deported to China from Kenya last month, including 23 who had been acquitted by the African country’s courts.
At about 7pm on Saturday, Chen issued a strongly worded statement, in which he said the government had lodged a stern protest and expressed regret over Kuala Lumpur’s decision to deport the 32 Taiwanese to Beijing rather than to Taipei.
“President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has instructed Premier Simon Chang (張善政) to bring together officials from relevant government agencies to discuss the matter, while asking the Mainland Affairs Council and the Ministry of Justice to step up communications with China and to send a delegation there as soon as possible for negotiations and to examine the relevant evidence,” Chen said in his first statement.
A statement by the Executive Yuan issued at about the same time adopted a similar stance toward the incident.
Executive Yuan spokesman Sun Lih-chyun (孫立群) also deplored China’s claims that Taiwan had released 20 of the suspects and that all the fraud victims were Chinese as pretexts to pressure Kuala Lumpur into sending the 32 Taiwanese to Beijing.
However, both the Presidential Office and the Executive Yuan abruptly softened their positions at about 11pm, speaking positively of Beijing’s handling of the case.
Intriguingly, as early as 8pm on Saturday, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) issued a statement saying that after checks had been undertaken, it was discovered that China had notified Taiwan of the deportation beforehand and had invited Taiwanese officials to go to Beijing to jointly investigate the case.
“The KMT thinks this kind of interaction tallies with the 2009 cross-strait accord and tacit agreements between both sides of the Taiwan Strait,” the party said, adding that it would condemn anyone who attempted to exploit the deportations of fraud suspects for political reasons.
About 15 minutes later, China’s state-owned Xinhua news agency published an article saying that Chinese officials had informed their Taiwanese counterparts of what was to take place and had invited them to send representatives to jointly investigate the case.
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