Twelve Taiwanese were arrested in Cambodia last week on suspicion of engaging in telecom fraud, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, adding that the nation’s nearest representative office is requesting consular access to visit the suspects.
“We are fully aware of a case in which 18 telecom fraud suspects, including 12 Taiwanese, were apprehended in Kampong Speu in Cambodia on July 17,” deputy spokeswoman Joanne Ou (歐江安) told a weekly news conference in Taipei yesterday.
With the case still under investigation, the ministry has instructed its representative office in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, to contact Cambodian police and authorities to get details and ascertain if any other Taiwanese were involved.
Photo: Lu Yi-hsuan, Taipei Times
“We are requesting consular access from Cambodian authorities to check the condition of the Taiwanese suspects,” Ou said.
Saying that the ministry would ask Cambodian authorities to ensure the basic rights of the suspects, Ou also advised Taiwanese abroad to abide by the laws of their host countries and avoid becoming involved in illegal activity.
The English-language Khmer Times on Friday last week reported that police and immigration officers had on Wednesday arrested 18 Chinese on suspicion of telecom fraud in Kampong Speu Province.
Police confiscated 21 phones, five laptops, two printers, 33 desktop computers and six walkie-talkies during the operation, the report said.
In December last year, Cambodian authorities deported 46 Taiwanese to China.
Since 2016, at least 650 Taiwanese arrested in a third country on telecom fraud charges have been deported or extradited to China, Mainland Affairs Council data showed.
There are 77 incidents of Taiwanese travelers going missing in China between January last year and last month, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said. More than 40 remain unreachable, SEF Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said on Friday. Most of the reachable people in the more than 30 other incidents were allegedly involved in fraud, while some had disappeared for personal reasons, Luo said. One of these people is Kuo Yu-hsuan (郭宇軒), a 22-year-old Taiwanese man from Kaohsiung who went missing while visiting China in August. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office last month said in a news statement that he was under investigation
An aviation jacket patch showing a Formosan black bear punching Winnie the Pooh has become popular overseas, including at an aviation festival held by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force at the Ashiya Airbase yesterday. The patch was designed last year by Taiwanese designer Hsu Fu-yu (徐福佑), who said that it was inspired by Taiwan’s countermeasures against frequent Chinese military aircraft incursions. The badge shows a Formosan black bear holding a Republic of China flag as it punches Winnie the Pooh — a reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — who is dressed in red and is holding a honey pot with
Celebrations marking Double Ten National Day are to begin in Taipei today before culminating in a fireworks display in Yunlin County on the night of Thursday next week. To start the celebrations, a concert is to be held at the Taipei Dome at 4pm today, featuring a lineup of award-winning singers, including Jody Chiang (江蕙), Samingad (紀曉君) and Huang Fei (黃妃), Taipei tourism bureau official Chueh Yu-ling (闕玉玲) told a news conference yesterday. School choirs, including the Pqwasan na Taoshan Choir and Hngzyang na Matui & Nahuy Children’s Choir, and the Ministry of National Defense Symphony Orchestra, flag presentation unit and choirs,
China is attempting to subsume Taiwanese culture under Chinese culture by promulgating legislation on preserving documents on ties between the Minnan region and Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said yesterday. China on Tuesday enforced the Fujian Province Minnan and Taiwan Document Protection Act to counter Taiwanese cultural independence with historical evidence that would root out misleading claims, Chinese-language media outlet Straits Today reported yesterday. The act is “China’s first ad hoc local regulations in the cultural field that involve Taiwan and is a concrete step toward implementing the integrated development demonstration zone,” Fujian Provincial Archives deputy director Ma Jun-fan (馬俊凡) said. The documents
RSS