A former Kinmen County-based army officer who has been held by Chinese authorities after being rescued by the China Coast Guard in the middle of March is to be allowed to return to Taiwan on Wednesday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Jessica Chen (陳玉珍) said in a statement on Thursday.
Chen said that she would travel to China with the family of the recently discharged officer, surnamed Hu (胡), to bring him home.
On Friday, Ocean Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said on Facebook that on Thursday she had contacted Chen, who represents Kinmen, as well as the Kinmen County government, the Red Cross Society’s Kinmen branch and Haiyin Temple to thank them for their efforts to help negotiate Hu’s release.
Photo: Wu Cheng-ting, Taipei Times
Kuan said she has instructed people at her agency to re-establish contact on law enforcement cooperation across the Taiwan Strait, because search and rescue at sea requires the two sides to work together.
The responsibility of the Coast Guard Administration (CGA), which the council oversees, to maintain order at sea is also a shared goal of the two sides, she said.
Hu was serving in Kinmen when he and a civilian were rescued by the China Coast Guard after their boat broke down and drifted into the waters off China’s Fujian Province during a fishing trip on March 17.
The civilian was returned to Kinmen on March 23, but Hu was detained because he was not forthcoming about his military status, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said.
In early May, the Army Command Headquarters approved an application filed by Hu’s family on his behalf for a voluntary military discharge. Chen accompanied Hu’s family to visit him in Quanzhou, China, on June 22.
The negotiations for Hu’s return were hampered by a standoff over a deadly chase between a Chinese speedboat and a CGA vessel in waters around Kinmen on Feb. 14 that left two Chinese nationals dead, Chen said in her statement.
Taiwanese and Chinese representatives reached a settlement over the incident at a meeting in Kinmen on Tuesday.
The terms of the settlement were not made public, but on the same day, CGA Director-General Chang Chung-lung (張忠龍) during a memorial service in Kinmen again apologized for the failure to record evidence during the incident and for the suffering endured by the families of the two dead men.
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