More than 600 Taiwanese abroad were extradited between 2016 and 2019 to China, a country that the NGO Safeguard Defenders accused in a report of using deportations to “undermine Taiwanese sovereignty.”
The NGO, based in Madrid, describes the extraditions as “persecution” by China and warned that these Taiwanese face possible “violations of their human rights” in that country, a “lack of a fair trial” and “Torture”.
The organization indicates in the report – collected today by the Taiwanese press – Spain as the largest extraditer of Taiwanese to China in that period, with 219 cases.
In 2017, the Spanish National Court thus justified the extradition of the Taiwanese, accused of fraud in the telecommunications sector: “The international community, except for the countries with which it has diplomatic relations, understands Taiwan as part of China.”
Similar reasoning was followed by the Kenyan authorities, a country that also decided to deport Taiwanese citizens to China in 2016: “We follow international laws. We do not have relations with Taiwan, but with China ”, the Kenyan Interior Ministry explained at the time, quoted in the NGO report.
However, Safeguard Defenders, which assures that there is “increasing pressure from Beijing”, cites the Czech Republic as an example, whose courts rejected in 2020 an extradition of Taiwanese citizens to China because there was the possibility that they “suffered torture. ”Upon arrival in the Asian country.
Beijing has sometimes argued that when the victims of crimes are citizens of mainland China, the culprits should be sent to China.
The NGO recommends “increasing the representation of Taiwan” at the international level and requests the accession of the territory to Interpol.
Taiwan currently maintains diplomatic relations with 15 countries: Guatemala, Honduras, Vatican City, Haiti, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Eswatini, Tuvalu, Nauru, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Belize, Marshall Islands and Palau .
Taiwan – where the Chinese nationalist army withdrew after the defeat at the hands of communist troops in the civil war – has been governed autonomously since 1949, although China claims for itself sovereignty of the island, which it considers a rebel province for whose Reunification has not ruled out the use of force.
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