The detention of Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong (黃之鋒) in Thailand raised concerns that Taiwanese who travel abroad could face deportation to China for advocating independence, civil campaigners said yesterday at a Legislative Yuan hearing.
“Even though [Wong] was deported back to Hong Kong, we are concerned that the day will come when activists will be sent to China, particularly a Taiwanese could be deported to China from a foreign nation on the basis of violating China’s ‘Anti-Secession’ Law,” said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Yu Mei-nu (尤美女), who chaired the hearing sponsored by the Legislative Yuan’s Parliamentary Cross-Party Group on International Human Rights, Taiwan Association for Human Rights and the Economic Democracy Union.
The jurisdiction of Chinese courts over Taiwanese has been a contentious issue following Kenya’s extradition of Taiwanese implicated in telecommunications fraud to China earlier this year. In a separate fraud case in Malaysia, Taiwanese authorities fought to secure several suspects’ extradition to Taiwan, only to see them released on arrival for lack of evidence.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
“To a certain degree, China has forced Taiwan’s legal system into making seemingly unjust decisions by not giving us sufficient evidence or only letting us extradite minor suspects, while they take the main ones. This creates the impression that Taiwan’s legal system is powerless to tackle this type of crime,” Taiwan Association for Human Rights executive committee member Lee Chia-wen (李佳玟) said, adding that addressing extradition issues has become more difficult since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office, which preceded a cooling of cross-strait ties.
Lee said that claims of jurisdiction over fraud cases should be based on the destination of money transfers rather than the suspects’ nationalities in a bid to establish a clear legal claim to jurisdiction.
“Besides protesting against the extraditions, the Executive Yuan and Legislative Yuan should consider including human rights considerations in deciding whether to execute the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement (海峽兩岸共同打擊犯罪及司法互助協議),” Economic Democracy Union convener Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) said, adding that Ministry of Justice guidelines do not mention human rights.
He cited a lack of judicial independence, forced confessions, admission of illegally acquired evidence and other concerns as reasons to reject Chinese extradition requests on human rights grounds.
According to Ministry of Justice statistics, Taiwan has extradited 12 people to China since the agreement was signed in 2009, while China has extradited 462 people to Taiwan.
Bruce Chung (鍾鼎邦), a Falun Gong practitioner, said that he was allowed to contact his relatives after being detained during a 2012 trip to China only after beginning a hunger strike.
“No one knew that I had been detained. I was kidnapped and ‘evaporated,’” he said. “When I demanded to be allowed to notify my family and to be accompanied by a lawyer, they denied my requests on the basis of ‘national security.’”
Following an international outcry, Chung was released after 54 days in detention, but had to sign a “repentance statement” for allegedly helping Falun Gong activists hijack the signal of a Chinese television station in 2003.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) and Chunghwa Telecom yesterday confirmed that an international undersea cable near Keelung Harbor had been cut by a Chinese ship, the Shunxin-39, a freighter registered in Cameroon. Chunghwa Telecom said the cable had its own backup equipment, and the incident would not affect telecommunications within Taiwan. The CGA said it dispatched a ship under its first fleet after receiving word of the incident and located the Shunxin-39 7 nautical miles (13km) north of Yehliu (野柳) at about 4:40pm on Friday. The CGA demanded that the Shunxin-39 return to seas closer to Keelung Harbor for investigation over the
An apartment building in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) collapsed last night after a nearby construction project earlier in the day allegedly caused it to tilt. Shortly after work began at 9am on an ongoing excavation of a construction site on Liuzhang Street (六張街), two neighboring apartment buildings tilted and cracked, leading to exterior tiles peeling off, city officials said. The fire department then dispatched personnel to help evacuate 22 residents from nine households. After the incident, the city government first filled the building at No. 190, which appeared to be more badly affected, with water to stabilize the
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
Taiwan plans to cull as many as 120,000 invasive green iguanas this year to curb the species’ impact on local farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture said. Chiu Kuo-hao (邱國皓), a section chief in the ministry’s Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency, on Sunday said that green iguanas have been recorded across southern Taiwan and as far north as Taichung. Although there is no reliable data on the species’ total population in the country, it has been estimated to be about 200,000, he said. Chiu said about 70,000 iguanas were culled last year, including about 45,000 in Pingtung County, 12,000 in Tainan, 9,900 in
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