Taipei Times
Date: May 04, 2016
By: Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said that a report published by an international human rights organization expressing concerns over the deportations of Taiwanese fraud suspects to China is expected to exert pressure on the parties concerned.
At a news conference in Taipei yesterday morning, Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General Antonio Chen (陳俊賢) said since the deportation of 45 Taiwanese citizens to Beijing earlier last month, his colleagues on the front line have endeavored to seek assistance.
“Now the case has gained the attention of two human rights groups — Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — whose [Human Rights Watch] China director Sophie Richardson published a report on the incident on April 24,” Chen said.
In the report, Ending Extra-legal Deportations to China, Richardson voiced doubt that the 45 Taiwanese, some of them acquitted by Kenyan courts, would receive a fair trial in China.
“Soon after Kenyan courts acquitted the suspects, the Taiwanese — and perhaps the mainlanders [sic] — were put on planes and sent to China. Images of the hooded and shackled Taiwanese in transit, as well as the subsequent broadcast of some of their ‘confessions,’ offer little reassurance that they will enjoy any semblance of a fair trial,” Richardson wrote. [FULL STORY]