At least eight Taiwanese retired military or police personnel have been detained in China in the past year, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday, urging individuals with similar backgrounds to be cautious if they travel there.
Chinese authorities wanted to gather information about the individuals, specifically regarding their work, colleagues and networks, MAC deputy head and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said.
Asked how long the eight people were held for, Liang replied: “The durations vary,” without elaborating.
Photo: Reuters
Such detentions could be an attempt to recruit individuals to work for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Liang said, citing cases prosecuted in the past few years involving retired military personnel working for the CCP.
“Seniors recruit juniors, superiors recruit subordinates and even former comrades introduce one another,” he added.
One of the recent espionage cases involving Taiwanese military personnel being recruited by the CCP centered around Liu Sheng-shu (劉聖恕), a retired air force colonel who served as a spy and used his connections within the military to recruit active navy and air force officers to engage in espionage.
In April last year, Liu and six officers were indicted for contravening the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), and later in the year, the High Court branch in Kaohsiung found six of the seven defendants, including Liu, guilty.
Liu was sentenced to 20 years in prison and his illegal gains paid by China were seized.
Meanwhile, two anglers surnamed Hu (胡) and Wu (吳) from Kinmen County were detained by Chinese authorities after they went astray while fishing and were picked up by the China Coast Guard on March 17.
Wu and his fishing boat were handed over to the Kinmen Coast Guard by Chinese officials on March 23, but Hu, an active soldier whose retirement had been approved on May 8, has not yet been released by the Chinese authorities.
Liang said the council has used several channels to communicate with the Chinese side in an attempt to expedite the return of Hu, but has received no response.
“This incident has now lasted for more than three months — no matter what needs to be investigated, it should not take longer than that,” Liang said, adding that the council is not clear on the reason for Hu’s continued detention.
He said that in the waters between Kinmen and the Chinese city of Xiamen, there has always been an understanding between the two sides regarding low-level incidents, such as anglers going astray.
“When we rescue their people, we send them back, and in the past, they did the same,” he said. “Why this incident is an exception is something we honestly cannot understand.”
The Chinese authorities have not classified the incident as immigration-related or said that Hu committed a crime, they have only confirmed he is being held due to his military background, he added.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Chen Binhua (陳斌華) on March 22 said that Hu was being held because he “intentionally fabricated information about his occupation in an attempt to conceal it,” adding that the authorities needed to verify Hu’s identity to fully understand the situation.
On May 15, Chen said information related to the event “is still being verified.”
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS