The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday lodged a protest with Manila, threatening to re-examine bilateral relations after Philippine authorities allegedly ignored the ministry’s request not to send 14 Taiwanese suspected of involvement in an international fraud ring to stand trial in China.
The ministry said the Philippine government had violated legal procedures and international law by deporting the 14 Taiwanese to China.
“We are firmly against such an act and will re-examine all exchanges between the two countries,” the ministry said in a statement.
It said Manila’s National Bureau of Investigation and Beijing’s Ministry of Public Security had formed a joint task force and arrested 14 Taiwanese and 10 Chinese suspected of international racketeering during a raid in Manila on Dec. 27.
The ring’s victims are believed to be Chinese, with the gang netting NT$600 million (US$20.6 million) from their swindles. Beijing asked Manila to extradite all 24 suspects to China in accordance with an extradition treaty signed between the two countries in 2001, the ministry statement said.
The ministry’s representative to the Philippines has visited the 14 Taiwanese several times after learning of the extradition and firmly requested Manila return them to Taiwan for trial, it said.
The ministry has summoned Antonio Basilio, the representative of the Philippines in Taiwan, and his deputy, Carlo Aquino, twice to express its position.
The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in the Philippines had obtained a restraining order from the appeals court in Manila in an attempt to block the deportation and request the release of the Taiwanese. Nevertheless, Manila deported all 24 suspects to China yesterday, the ministry said.
In addition to lodging a strong protest with the Philippine government, the ministry said Representative to the Philippines Donald Lee (李傳通) had written a letter to Philippine President Benigno Aquino III.
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Shen Ssu-tsun (沈斯淳) also summoned Carlo Aquino yesterday morning to lodge a protest and notify him that the ministry would re-examine all exchanges with the Philippines.
The ministry has also notified the Ministry of Justice and the Mainland Affairs Council in the hopes that they could ask Beijing to repatriate the 14 Taiwanese to Taiwan. Taipei and Beijing signed the Cross-Strait Agreement on Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance in June 2009.
Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) told the Taipei Times that the justice ministry and Straits Exchange Foundation contacted their Chinese counterparts yesterday, requesting the Taiwanese be sent back to Taiwan for trial.
Liu declined to comment on Manila’s actions, saying it was the foreign ministry’s jurisdiction.
The Manila Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei declined yesterday to comment on the issue
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS