The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday said that 17 of 25 suspects arrested on Monday on Boracay in the Philippines are Taiwanese.
“With regard to the 25 suspects … the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines has verified their identities through the Philippine police and confirmed that 17 of them are Taiwanese,” ministry spokeswoman Eleanor Wang (王珮玲) told a routine news conference in Taipei.
Police in the Philippines are still investigating the allegations of drug trafficking, she said, adding that the ministry has told Manila that it hopes to be kept updated on the case and that the suspects’ legal rights are protected.
Asked if Beijing appears to have intervened in the case, Wang said that as the arrests happened on Monday, the ministry’s first priority was to ascertain how many of the suspects are Taiwanese.
“Since we know that 17 are Taiwanese, the nationalities of the rest are not the ministry’s concern. We only focus on our own nationals,” Wang said.
The ministry urged Taiwanese not to engage in illegal activities while abroad, she said.
The Central News Agency yesterday reported that immigration authorities in the Philippines identified the other eight suspects as Chinese, although they had initially claimed to be Taiwanese.
Philippine authorities are also investigating if the 25 suspects were involved in telecommunications fraud targeting Chinese, the agency reported.
Manila authorities would handle the deportation of the suspects in accordance with “customary practices,” the agency quoted a Philippine immigration officer as saying.
In the past, when victims of telecom fraud were not in the Philippines and there were no plaintiffs there, local prosecutors have often dismissed the cases and the suspects are deported, the report said.
Taipei and Beijing have been wrangling over jurisdiction of Taiwanese arrested abroad for alleged involvement in crimes targeting Chinese and other foreign victims. Beijing has pressured several nations to deport Taiwanese to China rather than Taiwan.
Earlier this month, Kenya deported five Taiwanese and 35 Chinese to Beijing days after they were acquitted by a local court of telecommunications fraud.
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