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No easy task to bring back 45 detained nationals in China: premier

ROC Central News Agency

2016/04/20 16:13:10

Taipei, April 20 (CNA) Premier Simon Chang (張善政) said Wednesday that it will not be easy to bring back 45 Taiwanese nationals deported to China by Kenya for alleged telecom fraud.

Chang said a delegation has arrived in China to negotiate the matter, and that the Cabinet will give it a "free hand to do as much as possible in the negotiation."

To get the Taiwanese nationals back from China soon will be one of the topics in the talks, but Chang said it will not be easy to get them back immediately because China also has its own judicial procedure.

On whether it will be possible to bring the suspects back to serve jail terms after the judicial procedures are completed, he said that there are such precedents.

But since the suspects have been taken to China instead of Taiwan in the past, "we cannot be optimistic" that they can be brought back soon.

The premier made the remarks during an inspection tour of a training center of the National Fire Agency in Jhushan, Nantou County.

Commenting on a Taiwanese delegation's expulsion from an international meeting in Brussels Monday due to Chinese bullying, he said that he hopes the incoming administration under President-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) will have enough wisdom to maintain stable relations with China so as not to undermine Taiwan's maneuvering space in the international community.

He was referring to Taiwan's expulsion from a high-level symposium on excess capacity and structural adjustments in the steel sector co-sponsored by Belgium and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and held in the Belgian capital that day.

The Chinese delegation said that the Taiwanese delegation was "not of a high enough level," and demanded that it should be excluded, which Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs termed "ridiculous." The premier agreed, but the Belgian deputy prime minister sided with Beijing and told the Taiwanese delegation to leave.

"The public should be clear by now that the other side of the Taiwan Strait does have an influence over Taiwan's participation in international organizations and meetings," the premier said.

He cited as examples China's establishment of diplomatic relations with the Gambia and that Taiwan has yet to receive an invitation to attend the annual conference of the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, which will be held in Geneva May 23-28.

China has ratcheted up its pressure on Taiwan in the international community since Tsai Ing-wen of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party won Taiwan's presidential election in January.

(By Tai Ya-chen, Hsiao Po-yang and Lilian Wu)
ENDITEM/J