Kenya Mess: What's the next step?

Mountain roads of Taiwan. 

Nobody does irony like the KMT. Yesterday KMT legislators warned that....

“We must not let Taiwan descend into a haven for fraudsters, nor see it become a major export of swindlers to the world,” she said.

“The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the New Power Party have been shouting empty slogans about human rights and jurisdiction, but in the end, it is our society that pays a huge price,” she said.

Yes, we must not let Taiwan become a haven for fraudsters, like it was for those guys connected to the old Green Gang in 1949. As a friend noted, it's a pity that the KMT didn't control the legislature for the last sixty years, so they could do nothing about Taiwan being a haven for scammers...

With Malaysia preparing to hand over the remaining 32 suspects after arrangements are made (like evidence, I hope), it is important to ask what needs to be done. In addition to cleaning up the judicial system (haha) and changing some of the laws, my man DK suggested that President Tsai Ing-wen should probably think about some political and propagada ju-jitsu. Put China on the defensive by offering increased cooperation in crime and emphasizing this as a non-political area of cross-strait relations. This would help disarm the attacks from commentators and the media that the DPP is anti-China. It would also limit robust cross-strait cooperation to definable and controllable areas. When China balks, Tsai can then criticize China when they start yak-yakking about the faux "1992 Consensus" being the basis for cross-strait cooperation even in crime -- "What? You place the 1992C ahead of the security of your people?"

UPDATE: Last week another batch of Taiwanese arrested in Kenya doing the same place in the district of Nairobi. By the time all the processes are finished, MOFA will be Tsai Ing-wen's MOFA. Let's see what happens....
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Daily Links:

• MUST READ: The DPP's cross-strait oversight bill is a problem. Already it has stirred up the napping student movement by adopting the KMT legislative style and language. Further, Tsai's cabinet is full of technocrats often with Blue backgrounds. It would have been great if she had been more people-oriented. Don't be surprised when the student movement finally opens its guns on the DPP...
• Solidarity: Taiwan reps forced out of int'l steel meeting by PRC, Belgian reps. Since China is major steel dumping nation, and Taiwan reps were always welcomed by China before, this may have been China's way of stalling the meeting and preventing it from reaching agreement, as the media announced today. Cole argues it is China turning the screws on Taiwan.
• Obvious pro-China commentary on incoming Tsai Ing-wen administration. But it does have one interesting observation: China will be watching education system decisions to determine stance of Tsai Administration. Tsai is being urged to delineate her curriculum changes even as the pro-KMT curriculum issue simmers.
• Pro-PRC commentator at The Diplomat also says that deportations from Kenya not about sovereignty, places them in context of China's ongoing campaign against scammers in the region, just as I said. Fortunately the nationalist frenzy is receding as some realize Taiwan is not exactly blameless, while others work to slot this into the conventional Blue-Green framework of Taiwan politics. *Sigh*
• Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je accuses President Ma of protecting Farglory behind the scenes.
• NOT TAIWAN: just discovered Einojuhani Rautavaara today. I love Youtube. Without it, I'd never know Raff, Wetz, Sgiambotti, or Melartin, or a hundred others. 

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

As the legal system grapples with overseas gangster crimes, the Minister of Justice produces unprofessional KMT screed

Stop in. Have a drink.

CLARITY UPDATE: Need to make clear. The 45 Taiwanese entered Kenya illegally and thus, based on its own laws, Kenya can deport them back to their point of origin, which was China. Kenyan government officials made this clear. Article 43 of Kenya's immigration law specifies that the default option is to return them to point of origin, and also specifies that once a person is found to have entered Kenya illegally, then they can be deported at the Cabinet Secretary's whim. This was not an abduction/kidnapping. This is a deportation back to port of embarkation. That is why China got them. It did not need to make a formal request, because someone probably explained to the China police, who had been there since Dec 2014, that if they waited, the prisoners would be deported back to China.

The Taipei Times reported on the bizarre and revealing complaint of Minister of Justice, which she acknowledged, had been written largely by herself....

A statement issued by the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) late on Saturday has further fueled conflict between lawmakers and Minister of Justice Luo Ying-shay (羅瑩雪), with netizens accusing Luo of treating the ministry’s Web site as her personal Facebook page.

The netizens were quite right, in their way, but then so was Luo.

“As you all know, cross-strait ties are complicated. It is not like the other side [of the Taiwan Strait] will agree to whatever we say. Just like in Taiwan, not all students listen to their professors,” the statement said.

Under the 2009 Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement (海峽兩岸共同打擊犯罪及司法互助協議), everything ranging from exchanging criminal intelligence resources and launching joint investigations to handing over evidence can only be carried out following cross-strait negotiations, the statement said.

“The ministry is not entitled to make any unilateral decisions,” it added.

The statement went on to blast lawmakers, saying they were shifting blame onto the ministry over the release of 20 Taiwanese fraud suspects deported to Taiwan from Malaysia on Friday last week due to a lack of evidence, which is still in China’s hands and has yet to be referred to Taiwanese authorities.

“These lawmakers act as if China is at the ministry’s beck and call, and have no regard for the time needed for bilateral negotiations. They denounce China, on one hand for the sake of sowing hatred and social divisions, and on the other hand, they ask the ministry to obtain relevant evidence from China,” the statement said.

“Such manipulation of populism is likely to have a disastrous effect on Taiwan. Please, lawmakers, if you truly love Taiwan, stop now before going too far. Give Taiwan a break,” it said.

It's high comedy to listen to KMTers plead to pro-Taiwan types to "give Taiwan a break" but however unprofessional this screed was, Luo was right: there isn't anything that the Ministry of Justice can do. This was a screw-up by MOFA that dates back over a year, with deep roots that go back to wrongs like the KMT's refusal to create an independent Taiwan and the vicious Han Chauvinism at the heart of the KMT identity, which regards brown people as not worthy of relations.

One interesting thing in this mess is the reference to inciting "social divisions" (= saying out loud that Taiwanese are not Chinese) and "populism". These are classic KMT propaganda tropes. Last year then-presidential candidate (now KMT Chair) Hung Hsiu-chu gave us a  stellar example of this.

Governing the country through populism: The final, most extreme example of this is obviously the Nazis. The Nazis ceaselessly created enemies within the country to control the entire society. Think about it: Although Taiwan isn’t that extreme, isn’t our situation like that? It’s like that classic saying: “When the Nazis were killing the Communist Party, I wasn’t in the Communist Party, so I said nothing. When Nazis killed the Jews, I wasn’t a Jew, so I said nothing. When the Nazis killed the Catholics, I was a Protestant, so I said nothing. When the Nazis arrested me, there was no one there to speak for me.” Isn’t this kind of scene a little familiar to us?

When soldiers are bullied by populism, we aren’t soldiers, so we don’t speak. When teachers are bullied by populism, we’re not teachers, so we don’t speak for them, either. When civil servants are bullied by populism, we aren’t civil servants, so we don’t speak for them, either. But don’t you worry that on the day when you’re bullied, there will be no one to speak for you?

There’s no shortcut to resisting populism. The people in society who are willing to listen to reason can only choose to stop being a silent majority...

The strike at "populism" reflects, as I noted them, the colonialist fear of majority rule, supported by reference to three strong supporters of the KMT, the military, the educational bureaucracy, and the civil service. ADDED: Ben Goren pointed out on Twitter that the "students-professors" remark was a slap at the Sunflowers.

The China Post ran a good article outlining some of the problems with Taiwan's organized crime against China. In my opinion the Kenya case was not a signal to the incoming Tsai Ing-wen Administration, but a signal to Taiwan that China is fed up with being targeted by Taiwan scammers, about which the government does nothing. The article observes...

According to police statistics recently released by the Chinese-language United Daily News, Taiwan authorities have brought back more than 6,000 nationals involved in fraud charges from overseas since 2005.

Another statistic shows that cross-border fraud rings involving Taiwanese citizens made 4.7 billion phone calls to potential victims in mainland China from January to June 2015 alone.

As noted by China's Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), Taiwanese cross-border scams have conned billions of renminbi out of Chinese citizens every year, which is one of the main reasons Beijing would forcibly send the Taiwanese who were believed to be responsible for fraud schemes to China despite Taiwan's strong protest.

....

Another reason for rampant phone fraud in Taiwan, as pointed out by Taiwanese lawmakers, is that the local court treats scammers "too leniently."

Taiwan's Criminal Code stipulates that those convicted of fraud through the use of telephones or other communication equipment will face imprisonment of not more than five years.

For instance, in June 2011, in a joint effort with Indonesian police, Taiwan managed to have 100-plus Taiwanese fraud suspects operating in the East Asian country returned to Taiwan.

However, a court later gave 26 of these 100-plus suspects lenient sentences: 17 were given suspended sentences, eight were offered the option to pay fines in exchange for jail terms, and only one was sentenced to a year in prison.

In fact, the China Post commentary admits, many citizens support China in this because they want to see the alleged scammers punished, which Taiwan is not doing (a fact which few commenting on this case are mentioning). Almost everyone in Taiwan has a friend or family member who has been victimized by scammers. I can name 3 people in my family, and several of my neighbors. China, the commentary observes, gives such people ten year sentences.

The fraud rings have evolved, moving out of Taiwan and further across the Indo-Pacific region, to get out of the reach of China, as I was noting a few days back....

The CIB said that cross-country fraud rings have migrated from Taiwan to China, and now to countries in Southeast Asia and Africa.

From 2004 to 2008, annual fraud cases passed the 40,000 mark, though after the Cross-strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement came into effect in 2009, cases have fallen to 30,000.

Fraud rings have since moved their operations and platforms to third countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines after 2010, the CIB stated.

According to the media, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is finally bestirring itself. In 2014 40 Taiwanese were arrested in Egypt for phone scams. They were subsequently sentenced to a year in prison and now MOFA is assuring us that when the sentences are finished they will be repatriated to Taiwan. Unlike the Kenya case...

Meanwhile the legislature is attempting to come to grips with the problem. Hung Tz-yung, my own legislator, made a few proposals...

Meanwhile, Hung Tzu-yung (洪慈庸) of the New Power Party is promoting an amendment to Article 7 of the Criminal Code to remove a provision that limits the application of the law in the event that the offenses are committed outside the Republic of China (Taiwan).

Currently, for offenses committed outside R.O.C. territory, the Criminal Code only applies if they are serious crimes punishable by at least three years in prison, according to the provision.

Hung said due to this restriction, Taiwan nationals arrested overseas for operating cross-border telecommunications fraud scams cannot be charged according to the Criminal Code after they are deported back to Taiwan, because the offense carries a sentence of merely one to seven years.

In many cases, she said, those involved in cross-border fraud scams were only given light sentences and were even acquitted, inviting criticism that Taiwan is a “haven for fraudsters.”

She's absolutely right. The incoming Justice Minister said there is no need to revise the law...

Taiwan's Criminal Code stipulates that those convicted of fraud through the use of telephones or other communication equipment will face imprisonment of not more than five years, Chiu said in a radio interview.

In 2004, however, the nature of the penalties for fraud offenses was revised to "one offense, one penalty," Chiu said, explaining that this means that the court can build up sentences based on the number of victims.

If moves are made to revise the code, "all (the relevant) sentences will be aggravated, and Taiwan will as a result become a country that has adopted heavy penalties," he said.

As it stands today, a defendant convicted of multiple fraud charges can be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison, depending on the severity of the crime and the judges' discretion, the minister-designate said.

Sure, judges have discretion, but they use it to avoid punishing the criminals. For example, in the 2011 case of the 14 scammers which Manila had sent to China, after they were returned they were tried, and all were permitted to pay fine. None served time.

KMT Chair Hung Hsiu-chu said something had to be done, because exporting fraud rings is very embarrassing.

Indeed, it is embarrassing. In fact, it is costing Taiwan the moral high ground in the international media, and permitting the PRC to completely play the government. As Solidarity noted in an email this morning, the suspects repatriated from Malaysia were immediately released. The Taiwan government claimed that the PRC had not provided the evidence against them, so it had to release them. Solidarity pointed out that the PRC may have withheld the evidence deliberately to provoke this outcome, so it could criticize Taiwan.

But news reports indicate that Taiwan did indeed have some evidence: transcripts of the police interrogations from Malaysia. No doubt the prosecutors could have found a reason to hold the men, had they really wanted to. Once again, the KMT government fumbled the ball -- it didn't even go through the motions of making sure the men were held for a few days until China delivered the evidence. It didn't even bother to save face by claiming that the men had been released "by mistake" -- "well dang, we tried to notify them to hold them men, but our message arrived to late." It simply handed China another PR opportunity, as the international media are reporting.

UPDATE: Ah, internet surfing. This from the 2011 case in which Phils sent 14 accused to China instead of to Taiwan, causing an uproar:

Some academics said the case had less to do now with Manila than Beijing, mostly because of imprecise language in the cross-strait agreements, including the Agreement on Joint Cross-Strait Crime-Fighting and Mutual Judicial Assistance.

“There was nothing wrong with the decision by the Philippines,” said Yang Yun-hua (楊雲驊), an assistant professor of law at National Chengchi University, in terms of jurisdiction and the location where the crimes were committed.

While under Taiwan’s criminal law, crimes committed in China are treated as if they occurred in Taiwan — the result of an antiquated Republic of China Constitution — this clause is not fully understood by other countries, he said.

UPDATE: The pro-KMT China Times lays down some smack on all the noise-makers:

But one cannot ignore the importance of the principle of international cooperation in mutual assistance in criminal justice. We must not level groundless accusations against Kenya and the Mainland. The law is the law. The Ministry of Justice has explained. The Mainland demanded that the suspect be prosecuted or tried on the Mainland. The request was in accordance with the rules of the principle of international cooperation in mutual assistance in criminal justice. Kenya repatriated the suspects to the Mainland, based on the principle of top priority in criminal jurisdiction by the country where the crime is committed. Kenya accepted that the Mainland requested China; hence it transferred the suspects to Mainland China. That is political reality. All Taiwan can do is ask the Mainland to handle it in accordance with pertinent cross-Strait agreements. Taiwan is in no position to level groundless accusations.

UPDATE: Good comments below, guys. Thanks!
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What? China didn't ask for those Taiwan fraudsters in Indonesia?

Chiayi hills.

FocusTaiwan yesterday reported on a case of alleged Taiwanese fraudsters in Indonesia being arrested.

A Taiwanese official based in Indonesia said there have been many cases of Taiwanese and Chinese nationals entering Indonesia to engage in telecom fraud.

Unlike the recent incident in Kenya, however, there have been no reports of Taiwanese suspects being deported to China, the official said.

The official was referring to Kenya's recent controversial decision to hand over to China a total of 45 Taiwanese nationals who allegedly were members of various Kenya-based telecom fraud rings targeting Chinese victims.

In cooperation with Taiwanese and Chinese police, Indonesian law enforcement officers last August busted an international fraud ring based in Indonesia, arresting 82 Taiwanese suspects and seizing IDR$10 billion

The Kenya incident is not about Tsai Ing-wen or Ma Ying-jeou. It does not signal a new normal. It is not related to the Hong Kong booksellers. It appears to be related to the ongoing pattern of Chinese investigation of international telephone fraud against its own citizens, something the Chinese state has a right and a duty to do. I might add that it helps Taiwanese, since they are also victims of these fraudsters.

However, if China's actions continue being misrepresented, they just might conclude there is no point in not being a$$holes in the future.
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

=UPDATEDX5= Kenya Deportations: Taiwan drinks the heady gaoliang of febrile nationalism

Our bikes in Fenchihu on Sunday. We stopped to snack, parked by the motorbikes by the roadside. "You can't park them there," a vendor warned us. "The cops will give tickets to people who park in the street because people walk there. Better park them on the sidewalk." 

'Sovereign, like love, means anything you want it to mean; 

it's a word in dictionary between sober and sozzled.' -- R. Heinlein

(Updates at bottom)

So much going on in this crazy case of deportation of alleged Taiwanese fraudsters from Kenya to China. Haven't seen such a display of dysfunctional, febrile nationalism like this since Philippines coast guard evil Philippines coast guard shot murdered tuna poachers totally innocent Taiwan fishermen in Philippines waters Taiwanese waters (old post). The collective IQ of Taiwan's chattering classes has just gone kerplunk! somewhere into the Indian Ocean east of Mombasa. *sigh*

Lost in the tumescent twaddlenoise over this case is an opportunity for Taiwan. It also shows once again how the international media functions as a soft power tool for Beijing. I hope to work up a fuller treatment of that for something like CPI or Ketagalan out at the end of the week, but we can shed some light on it using this case...

Let's grab a couple of news reports first: from Reuters in the Kenyan Star Newspaper (how that brings back memories for me!):

The Kenyan government said the people were in Kenya illegally and were being sent back to where they had come from.

Kenya does not have official relations with Taiwan and considers the island part of China, in line with Beijing's position.

Taiwan's Foreign ministry said one of the Taiwanese sent to China was also a US national. The US State Department said it was aware of that report but was not able to discuss it at the moment "due to privacy considerations."

....

The Taiwanese government was incensed that Kenyan authorities used force , including tear gas, to get deportees out of a police station and into a plane on Tuesday. It has accused China of kidnapping eight of its nationals.

"They came from China and we took them to China. Usually when you go to another country illegally, you are taken back to your last port of departure," said Kenyan Interior ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka.

He could not say which city in China they were being returned to, but Kenya Airways and China Southern both fly to Guangzhou.

Kenyan Foreign Affairs CS Amina Mohamed said Taipei had not contacted Nairobi about the matter. The protests came via a media briefing in Taiwan.

"We don't have official relations with Taiwan. We believe in the 'One China' policy. We have diplomatic relations with China. We haven't seen the official protest, we are actually hearing it from the media," Mohamed told Reuters.

A group of eight left on Friday and a second group of 37 Taiwanese nationals were in the process of leaving on Tuesday, Taiwan's Foreign ministry said.

Chinese Foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Beijing approved of Kenya's upholding the 'one China' principle. He declined to elaborate.

Now yesterday from the Taipei Times the Ministry of Justice said that the deportations were legal and China had every right...

However, they said that Beijing acted in conformity with the principles on legal jurisdiction in having them deported to China, where the targets of the fraud schemes reside.

Tai Tung-li (戴東麗), deputy director of the ministry’s Department of International and Cross-Strait Legal Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei that the government had asked Beijing to deal with the eight Taiwanese in accordance with the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement (海峽兩岸共同打擊犯罪及司法互助協議), and that they be released and sent back to Taiwan.

“Chinese government officials said they are investigating the Taiwanese suspects for fraud involving phone scams. As these cases took place in China, they were asserting their legal jurisdiction in having the Taiwanese suspects forcibly taken to China,” she said.

Tai said that the Chinese Ministry of Public Security had informed Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau that the eight were held in custody in Beijing on Monday, and promised to handle the case in accordance with the cross-strait legal agreement.

The government will send a delegation to China to negotiate the case, Tai added.
According to information released by Chinese authorities, the victims of the phone scams originating in Kenya were all Chinese citizens — not Taiwanese — so the suspects were deported to China for investigation, Tai said.

“The telecommunication facilities used to make the telephone calls were based in Kenya, so the fraud schemes took place outside of our country, so Taiwan does not have jurisdiction [over the case],” Tai said. “Therefore, China’s handling of the case conforms to principles of international criminal jurisdiction.”

As for reports that the Kenyan court had acquitted the eight, Tai said: “They were found not guilty on three of the charges, which were operating a telecommunications enterprise without a license, operating radio communications without a license and organized crime. The ruling did not involve the fraud charges. From an objective point of view, China made the deportation request to investigate the fraud charges.”

Today, thanks to the sudden wave of insensate nationalism sweeping the nation, the Ministry attempted to appear to reverse its position. Read what they said closely: same as yesterday, just different words.

Ibtimes report here observes:

The repatriated group's lawyer Steve Isinta said that police had told the group held at the police station to get ready because they would be leaving soon. He later received a message from one of his Taiwanese clients saying: "It's not our people coming for us," referring to the fact that Chinese officials had arrived at the police station instead of Taiwan representatives. Isinta said he did not hear from them after that.

Isinta told Quartz: "It was illegal for them to be deported. To be deported you have to have broken the law. It's because of pressure from China."

Isinta said that most Kenyans do not understand the controversy behind the deportation, nor do they care. Isinta has filed a motion to take the country's attorney general and the police chief to court over the detention and deportation of his clients following their acquittal.

Indeed, that last claim about Kenyans not caring seems quite true. I looked at a couple of papers, and the Kenyan papers seem to be relying on outside media services for their reports, like this AFP story on it in the Daily Nation.

The Daily Nation also featured another piece from AFP, which observed:

Asked to comment on the row Monday, China's foreign ministry said it needed to check on the details but "the One China policy should be upheld".

Check this Xinhua report (link) on the Public Security Ministry's comments on the case in Chinese. It focuses entirely on the criminal aspects, which are extensive. China says these and similar frauds have been raping Chinese citizens and all the victims are Chinese in this case. According to Xinhua, the gang set up in "dens of fraud" in Nairobi, and made internet calls to Beijing, Jiangsu, Hunan, Sichuan and nine other provinces and municipalities posing as Chinese public security authorities to commit fraud with initial estimates of millions of dollars. Old people, students, savings, -- all gone. The piece also complains that Taiwan just lets people go once they've been sent back here. China is not exactly blameless (can we have back all the criminals from Taiwan who have taken refuge there?) but they do make some strong points. It even refers to cooperation with Taiwan over similar fraud cases in SE Asia.

What's not in the report? Not even a boilerplate reiteration of sovereignty.

The foreign ministry spokesman just thanked Kenya for upholding the 'One China' policy and the foreign ministry backed that, but to my knowledge no official word concretely connected this case with the cross-strait sovereignty. No one has said "We deported them to China because they are all Chinese." The 'One China' mentions were boilerplate, trotted out on all diplomatic occasions. The same automated, unconscious words would have been uttered if Kenyan officials had hosted a tea party for Chinese diplomats.

This did not prevent BBC, always ready to screw Taiwan, from cleverly interpolating this boilerplate into its report (4th sentence) to make it look like the extraditions were related to the One China policy. Nice work, whoever did that.

Taiwan and all of its commentators here and abroad were presented with a golden opportunity NOT to make this thing about sovereignty, but instead to treat the case as a normal event between normal countries. To normalize relations between China and Taiwan. To say offhandedly "We hope that Chinese authorities will adjudicate the case in accordance with established international procedures and China-Taiwan agreements, and we are closely monitoring it. Now, moving on to the issue of falling exports and tax revenues..." That common sense move is exactly what our Ministry of Justice tried to do two days ago. Kudos to them.

Of course, Taiwan also had a chance to decouple an issue from the simpleminded sovereignty discussions in the international media. Tired of the international media's ignorant, interminable focus on Cross-Strait sovereignty issues? Stop playing that game. Instead we got total mediafail by our commentariat. The NYTimes report by the refreshingly competent Austin Ramzy was quite restrained, basically focusing on the diplomat spat, indeed, it was way more restrained than our own media. That's what we on the pro-Taiwan side should have encouraged all across the media, domestic and abroad.

Great job, guys.

Taiwan spokesman extraordinaire J Michael Cole is in CNN today on the issue, clearly identified as part of a Tsai Ing-wen funded organization (if Cole had China links, they probably would not have been so clearly identified). Sadly, Cole decided to run with the sovereignty issue and argue for other, more dubious links to odious Chinese behavior, when it could have been downplayed...

Besides the fact that the individuals were cleared of all crimes by a Kenyan court, their extradition to China, ostensibly due to pressure from Chinese officials, raises essential questions about the future implications of the "one China" policy in a time of greater Chinese assertiveness.

It didn't have to raise any "essential questions". It could have been kept as a simple issue of crime under international law. Sometimes a cigar should be permitted to be only a cigar: Cole should have moved to dampen the flames, not pour oil on them. I also can't resist pointing out that the individuals were not "cleared of all crimes" by the Kenyan court. They were cleared off all the crimes the Kenyan authorities brought to the court -- the fraud charges were withheld as the Taiwan Ministry of Justice said, probably because China wanted to prosecute those (that may have been why the Kenya authorities cleared them, so there would be no tussle about where they serve their prison sentences). China appears to have wanted to send a message, not about sovereignty, but about international crime (read the Xinhua report again. Note emphasis on tawdry fraud crime). It's been doing that for years, btw.

It doesn't raise any essential questions also because it has happened before, as I noted yesterday when I observed that everyone was barking up the wrong tree. In 2011 Philippines sent a bunch of alleged fraudsters back to China. Please enumerate the repercussions of that... O yeah, there weren't any. Well, there were -- all that assiduous pursuit of fraudsters in SE Asia by China over the last few years was probably a factor that sent them off to Kenya in the first place, where things are congenial for financial criminals.

Cole (and many others) have placed the extradition of alleged gangsters accused of being engaged in fraud in the context of the kidnapping innocent booksellers in Hong Kong (see this Reuters piece, for example). Turning fraudsters into heroes of dissent is a leap into an abyss where nobody should be going. Once again, the opportunity to normalize this behavior and separate it from the vile kidnapping of the booksellers by emphasizing the differences in the case was thrown away -- instead the abnormality and evil of the kidnapping of booksellers is blurred, denigrated.

Not only that, but the Hong Kong booksellers aren't even the right context -- the 2011 Philippines deportees are, and China's campaign against fraud in SE Asia. This is not a political crime issue, but a gangster crime issue.

Even the use of the term "kidnapping" is ill-advised. I do not know what the correct legal term should be, either deportation or extradition, but these men weren't "kidnapped". They were acquitted and given a fixed time to leave the country, then bundled off to the place they came from (you can't fly directly to Nairobi from Taipei, and the cheapest flights go through China. Hence Kenya seems to be correct). That's how the system works. People get deported to countries they are not citizens of all the time. That could have been invoked in this case -- instead of focusing on "China as China" the commentary could have stressed "China as a foreign country". You know, normalizing its distance from Taiwan.

It's quite true that China rushed to get them -- because once they got back to Taiwan, they would be out of Beijing's reach.

Cole claims that the 2009 crime-fighting agreement is a "dead instrument." Two days ago the Ministry of Justice said that China had notified Taiwan that the case will be handled in accordance with that. Let's wait and see on that, shall we?

Taiwan really ought to be going to bat for international law and its cross-strait agreements on crime, as the Ministry of Justice initially attempted to do. International law is one of the things that helps keep Taiwan out of Beijing's clutches -- heck, we could even have leveraged Chinese victimhood to support international law, in this case. Maybe we could have used this to get some of our own criminals there sent back...

Another lesson here is how, if you don't suppress the media's urge to make everything about the sovereignty issue, it will go right ahead and keep pointing that out, thus helping Beijing enforce its claims and make them known to the world.

Not only that, but once you claim that this is Beijing making trouble for Tsai, you've made trouble for Tsai that you didn't have to make.

Great work all around, folks.

It will, of course, have a temporary impact on Taiwan's attitudes toward China, but since they were largely negative anyway...

Finally, just as in the Philippines case, all this noise about "kidnapping", sovereignty, and the China threat may be out there to obscure an important truth that no one in Taiwan wants to face: one of Taiwan's chief exports is organized crime.

UPDATE: Julian Ku, the international law professor who tried to claim it was perfectly legal for China to maim and murder Taiwanese and annex their island (his political allegiance should be obvious if you find some of his stuff, so filter whatever he says hard), is cited in this NYTimes piece. NYTimes observes:

Deporting suspects to third countries is not illegal under international law, said Julian Ku, a professor of international law at Hofstra University.

China also has the right under international law to prosecute people suspected of committing crimes directed at Chinese territory, Mr. Ku said. “China makes a lot of bad arguments, but this one is pretty good,” he said.

But, complicating matters, China and Taiwan have abided since 2009 by their Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement, which formalized criminal-justice cooperation and established a procedure for each side to return the other’s citizens in legal cases. In a 2011 fraud case, 14 Taiwanese suspects who had been deported from the Philippines to China were sent back to Taiwan under the agreement.

Some experts suspect that China’s change in strategy is a deliberate warning to Taiwan’s newly elected president, Tsai Ing-wen, who will take office in May and has advocated an approach to cross-strait relations that is more cautious than her predecessor’s.

“The Chinese are definitely trying to send a message,” Mr. Ku said. “Before this case, the Taiwanese were used to being consulted by China. The level of trust that made the agreement work seems to have broken down.”

Recall that in the 2011 case, it took months of negotiations to get back the Taiwanese Manila sent to China. They didn't just send them back right away as NYT could be read to imply. Same thing will happen here.

Again, there's a context missing: if all those Taiwanese criminals residing in China who haven't been sent back are not a message to Ma Ying-jeou (and Chen Shui-bian) how is it that this one case is a message to Tsai Ing-wen? The Kenyan investigation long predates Tsai Ing-wen's election. The timing is a coincidence, unless you want to argue that Beijing arranged it with Nairobi (feel free). Because the negotiations will drag out for months, it is way too early to say how and whether China is cooperating.

UPDATE 2: Taiwan Law Blog summarizes the three positions of Taiwan, China, and Kenya.

UPDATE 3: Here is the Kenya Star Jan 2015 report of the original arrest of the Kenya 8, originally in Dec of 2014. You want to claim this is about Tsai Ing-wen, go right ahead. I'll laugh at you. Note that the list of charges is consistent with that offered by the Ministry of Justice in its original statement.

The eight were arrested at Ngong Avenue, Ngong, in December.

Their arrest came after 77 Chinese were arrested following a fire outbreak at their Runda, Nairobi, residence.

The 77 have denied the charges of illegally running a telecommunication system, conspiring to commit a felony and engaging in organised criminal activity.

Police suspect the foreigners may have been involved in bank fraud, money laundering and other serious financial crimes in other countries using the telecommunication equipment seized.

Here is what the Ministry of Justice said:

As for reports that the Kenyan court had acquitted the eight, Tai said: “They were found not guilty on three of the charges, which were operating a telecommunications enterprise without a license, operating radio communications without a license and organized crime. The ruling did not involve the fraud charges. From an objective point of view, China made the deportation request to investigate the fraud charges.”

The Ministry of Justice's initial statement that fraud charges were not pursued appears to be correct.

Now here is the follow up Jan 27 report from The Star. Note that the timing of the case was fixed back in Jan, when the men began serving a one-year term.

Here is another report of Taiwanese operating an illegal radio station (?) but I don't know if these are the same guys sent to China this week. This appears to be a related report from Dec of 2014. Tentatively, the 8 and 37 Taiwanese all appear to have been discovered in the same fire, but were handled separately.

UPDATE 4: Commenter observes:

According to today's China Post here is what happened to the Taiwanese that were eventually sent back from the PI five years ago.

"Two were found not guilty, while the rest were handed sentences ranging from one year and four months to three years and eight months under combined violations.

However, no one was jailed as the case allowed them to convert imprisonment into fines, Sun stated."

It confirms what China has been complaining about, and why they went to prosecute these people themselves.

UPDATE 5: Ministry of Justice testifies about Kenya case:

However, Chen stated that the preliminary investigation showed that the international fraud ring only targeted Mainland Chinese, and that there were no Taiwanese victims. “In spite of this, we will still send people to the Mainland to learn more about the case. In the past, Taiwanese suspects in similar cases were repatriated to Taiwan, but were later released because we had no jurisdiction. Therefore, this time we should be more cautious in dealing with the case,” stressed Chen.

UPDATE 6: The Nation newspaper of Kenya reported in Jan 2015 that China was asking for the prisoners. Taiwan has had a whole year to act on this. Either the diplomatic corps didn't care, or it was incompetent. It didn't move until it became a nationalist issue in Taiwan, and the government had to stoke cross-strait emotions to cover up the fact that it had dilly-dallied for a year, done nothing, and then been blindsided. Taiwan had a whole year to secure "due process".  Posted on it several posts above this one.

REF: The 2011 Phils case and China power.
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