Taipei Times
Date: Sep 19, 2015
By: Alison Hsiao / Staff reporter
Civil activists yesterday urged the authorities to conduct a thorough investigation of the
Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator Lai Chen-chang, left, and Association for China Human Rights president Yang Hsien-hung at a press conference yesterday in Taipei urge the government not to deport the five Chinese nationals found on a yacht off the Taoyuan coast without conducting a thorough investigation to determine whether they are asylum seekers or Chinese spies. Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
five Chinese nationals found on a yacht off Taoyuan County last week to determine whether they were planning to seek asylum in the US, as they claimed, or Chinese spies, coming as they did around the time of the Han Kuang military exercises.
Taiwan Association for China Human Rights chairman Yang Hsien-hung (楊憲宏) told a press conference that whatever the group’s motivations were, they should not be repatriated to China within 15 days of their detention.
The news was first reported by Radio Free Asia (RFA), which on Monday said that the five were found on a yacht on Sunday last week.
Three of them left China’s Shandong Province on Aug. 6 and almost perished at sea when they encountered a typhoon on Aug. 20, but were rescued by the Japan Coast Guard and sent to China’s Fujian Province, the report said. From there, the trio again set out for Taiwan to pick up two other Chinese citizens who had been staying in Taiwan with expired visas, it said. [FULL STORY]
