TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The National Immigration Agency (NIA) has started the deportation of 21 Chinese citizens, including a man claiming to be a dissident, reports said Thursday (Jan. 6).
The procedure started in May last year when the NIA sent a name list to China of 23 Chinese who had illegally entered Taiwan, CNA reported. Talks between the two countries resulted in an agreement to repatriate the Chinese in four stages, but by that time, two had disappeared.
The 18 men and three women reportedly include Hu Haibo (胡海波), who described himself as a human rights activist persecuted by Beijing’s communist government and a supporter of Hong Kong’s protest movements. However, observers said his recent behavior and statements had shown he was not a true dissident.
The NIA had initially planned to put the deportees on a ship from the offshore island of Kinmen to the Chinese province of Fujian. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the NIA chose instead to send them home by plane.
The first group left Taiwan on Wednesday (Jan. 5), with Hu departing on Thursday. The rest are scheduled to return to China before the start of the Lunar New Year holiday starting Jan. 29.
Despite tense relations between the two sides, Taiwan and China have still maintained contact in order to fight crime together. Even so, deportations take a lot more time to prepare than they used to do, reports said.
