Reports of Taiwanese going missing, being detained or interrogated, or having had their person liberties restricted in China have surged this year, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said today in a radio interview.
A total of 133 cases have been reported to the Straits Exchange Foundation and the MAC, up from 55 last year, Chiu said.
The cases can be divided into three categories: missing, detention and interrogation, and restriction of personal liberty by the Chinese Communist Party, especially with the use of Chinese criminal law, he said.
Photo: Bloomberg
The number of cases has been increasing by 20 every month, he said.
A travel alert for China, Hong Kong and Macau was upgraded to “orange” in June last year, he said, urging Taiwanese to carefully evaluate trips and register their itineraries on a new online platform launched in April.
Asked when group tourism and individual travel from China would resume on Taiwan proper, Chiu said it has been the council’s aim to resume cross-strait tourism exchange.
He called for authorities across the Taiwan Strait to communicate on tourism safety issues, adding that cross-strait tourism has been stalled for five years.
He urged China to restart communications on travel safety, quality, stability and fairness through the Taiwan Strait Tourism Association of Taiwan and the Association for Tourism Exchange Across the Taiwan Straits.
The associations were established by Taipei and Beijing respectively to facilitate coordination and negotiations between the two sides on tourism.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Taiwan Railways Corp (TRC) today announced that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has been selected as the preferred bidder to operate the Taipei Railway Station shopping mall, replacing the current operator, Breeze Development Co Ltd. Among eight qualified firms that delivered presentations and were evaluated by a review committee, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was ranked first, while Breeze was named the runner-up, the rail company said in a statement. Contract negotiations are to proceed in accordance with regulations, it said, adding that if negotiations with the top bidder fail, it could invite the second-ranked applicant to enter talks. Breeze in a statement today expressed doubts over
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