Twenty-one Chinese — including a self-proclaimed democracy advocate and a man who arrived in Taiwan in a rubber dinghy — who entered Taiwan illegally are being repatriated in four separate groups, the National Immigration Agency (NIA) said on Thursday.
A few of them were flown home on Wednesday and Thursday, and the entire process of repatriating the 18 men and three women is expected to be completed before the Lunar New Year holiday, the agency said.
The agency said that a list given to Chinese authorities in May last year — as stipulated in the Kinmen Accord — initially had 23 people to be sent home, but two of them have since gone missing, with a search ongoing.
In the Kinmen Accord, which was signed in 1990, both sides of the Taiwan Strait agreed to repatriate illegal immigrants and criminal suspects to the other side out of humanitarian considerations.
Among those repatriated on Thursday was Hu Haibo (胡海波), a self-proclaimed democracy advocate.
A report by the Chinese-language United Daily News (UDN) said that Hu swam from Xiamen in China’s Fujian Province to Kinmen on Sept. 25, 2020, and when discovered, told local authorities that he was a dissident who had been oppressed by the Chinese Communist Party and was seeking political asylum in a third country.
The UDN quoted Hu as saying that he had been forced into a drug rehabilitation center in China for supporting Hong Kong protests in 2019.
He was transferred to a Kaohsiung detention center, the report said.
In a separate report, the newspaper said that a source familiar with the matter believed Hu was not a true dissident and should be repatriated.
Among those who were repatriated on Wednesday was a man surnamed Zhou (周), who illegally entered Taiwan in early May last year from China, navigating a rubber dinghy into Taichung Harbor, the report said.
The NIA said at the time that Zhou claimed to have rowed from China’s east coast in pursuit of “freedom and democracy.”
He was held at a detention center in Nantou County.
The Mainland Affairs Council on Thursday said that the repatriation of people across the Taiwan Strait in either direction was a normal process that has been going on for years.
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