Taipei, April 15 (CNA) The Taiwan government has been working to ensure 52 nationals detained in Malaysia for alleged phone scams are not sent to China, Foreign Minister David Lin (林永樂) said Friday.
The matter took on extra urgency after 45 Taiwanese suspects were sent to China earlier this week by Kenyan police authorities. The suspects were allegedly members of a Chinese-Taiwanese telecommunications fraud ring that had been targeting people in China.
The foreign minister made the comments following a lawmaker's claim that a Chinese airliner was in Jakarta Friday morning to pick up the 52 Taiwanese and 65 Chinese suspects.
Lin told CNA he did not know whether China intended to pick up the Taiwanese suspects but Taiwan's representative office in Jakarta had made it clear to Malaysian authorities that the suspects should be deported to Taiwan as has been done in the past.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will do its best to prevent the Taiwanese suspects from being sent to China, Lin added.
It is believed that Chinese authorities want the Taiwanese and the Chinese suspects to be tried in China because many of the fraud victims are Chinese and the penalties there are harsher than in Taiwan.
(By Tang Pei-chun and Jay Chen)
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