Nantou County authorities on Tuesday raided a hideout in Jhushan Township (竹山) and detained six Vietnamese who had allegedly been poaching protected trees in the surrounding mountainous area.
National Immigration Agency (NIA) officials said that after receiving information about a group of runaway migrant workers engaged in illegal activities, they coordinated with local police and Nantou’s Military Police Command to conduct the operation.
“All six people arrested were found to be Vietnamese, led by a man surnamed Nguyen. They were all wanted by authorities, as they had run away from their registered work contracts and were hiding from their employers,” NIA Special Operation Corps in Nantou head Chen Chieh-chang (陳介章) said.
Chen said the six had been cutting down protected trees, which they trimmed down to wooden blocks to sell to criminal organizations.
Authorities searching the hideout found 23 blocks of Taiwan cypress, three blocks of red cedar, wood carving equipment and other tools, he said.
“We also found what is suspected to be amphetamine powder and drug paraphernalia, along with NT$33,000 in cash,” Chen said.
The suspects attempted to escape by jumping through windows and breaking out the backdoor, but police, having staked out the location, surrounded and apprehended the six, he said.
Nantou prosecutors have been questioning the suspects to determine the ringleader.
Prosecutors said they intend to press charges on violations of the Forestry Act (森林法), the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法) and the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act (毒品危害防制條例).
Forestry Bureau official Lee Yen-shou (李炎壽), who is head of the Nantou Forest District Office, said the valuable protected species have been threatened by forest poachers, known in Taiwan as “mountain rats” (山老鼠).
“Over the past few years, we have seen a surge in migrant workers who escape their legal work contracts and increasingly find work as mountain rats, plundering forests and conducting other illegal activities in mountainous areas,” Lee said.
Organizing one national referendum and 26 recall elections targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators could cost NT$1.62 billion (US$55.38 million), the Central Election Commission said yesterday. The cost of each recall vote ranges from NT$16 million to NT$20 million, while that of a national referendum is NT$1.1 billion, the commission said. Based on the higher estimate of NT$20 million per recall vote, if all 26 confirmed recall votes against KMT legislators are taken into consideration, along with the national referendum on restarting the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant, the total could be as much as NT$1.62 billion, it said. The commission previously announced
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday welcomed NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s remarks that the organization’s cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners must be deepened to deter potential threats from China and Russia. Rutte on Wednesday in Berlin met German Chancellor Friedrich Merz ahead of a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of Germany’s accession to NATO. He told a post-meeting news conference that China is rapidly building up its armed forces, and the number of vessels in its navy outnumbers those of the US Navy. “They will have another 100 ships sailing by 2030. They now have 1,000 nuclear warheads,” Rutte said, adding that such
Tropical Storm Nari is not a threat to Taiwan, based on its positioning and trajectory, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Nari has strengthened from a tropical depression that was positioned south of Japan, it said. The eye of the storm is about 2,100km east of Taipei, with a north-northeast trajectory moving toward the eastern seaboard of Japan, CWA data showed. Based on its current path, the storm would not affect Taiwan, the agency said.
The Taipei Department of Health’s latest inspection of fresh fruit and vegetables sold in local markets revealed a 25 percent failure rate, with most contraventions involving excessive pesticide residues, while two durians were also found to contain heavy metal cadmium at levels exceeding safety limits. Health Food and Drug Division Director Lin Kuan-chen (林冠蓁) yesterday said the agency routinely conducts inspections of fresh produce sold at traditional markets, supermarkets, hypermarkets, retail outlets and restaurants, testing for pesticide residues and other harmful substances. In its most recent inspection, conducted in May, the department randomly collected 52 samples from various locations, with testing showing