Cambodia says arrested Taiwanese fraud suspects handed over to China

BEIJING/TAIPEI – Cambodia said on April 15 it arrested a number of “Chinese criminals” in late March, including individuals from Taiwan, and days later handed them over to Chinese authorities, in deportations that have angered Taipei.

Taiwans foreign ministry said on April 14 that Cambodia had sent an unknown number of Taiwanese citizens to China after they were arrested working in telecom scam centres.

In a statement, a Cambodian foreign ministry spokesman said the decision to send the arrested people to China was in accordance with Cambodian law and adhered to Beijing’s “one China” policy, which states that there is only one China and Taiwan is part of China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is due in Cambodia this week on a South-east Asian tour that began in Vietnam on April 14 and will also include Malaysia.

The individuals handed over to the Chinese authorities are criminals, not ordinary people, and the handover of these individuals to the government of the Peoples Republic of China is no different from the practice by some other countries adhering to the one China policy, it added.

The ministry did not say how many people had been deported to China.

Chinas foreign ministry said it had no information about the deportations.

Taipei says Cambodia arrested 180 Taiwanese suspected of working in fraud centres and that on April 13 and early on April 14 almost 190 people were deported to China at the Chinese governments request.

Cambodia is one of Chinas closest allies in South-east Asia, and Taiwan does not have a de facto embassy there, unlike in many other parts of the region.

Mr Hsiao Kuang-wei, Taiwan foreign ministry spokesman, told reporters in Taipei earlier on April 15 that the government was still trying to find out exactly how many Taiwanese had been deported.

The