Forced extraditions to China

Politics Taiwan Politics
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[quote=“Omniloquacious”]If you commit crimes against people in country X, Y or Z, then you should expect to be brought to justice in country X, Y or Z, no matter where you’re hiding out when you commit the crimes or when they are detected. That is only right and just under the fundamental tenets of international law, basic jurisprudence and common sense.

If they had been PRC citizens and their victims Taiwanese, it would be absolutely right and just for them to be extradited to Taiwan to face trial here.

If they had been citizens of the US, UK or anywhere else, and had scammed victims in a dozen other countries, it would be absolutely right and just for them to be extradited to whichever of those countries acted to secure their extradition, regardless of the relative merits of the legal and/or political systems in their victims’ respective countries.

If I committed a telecom crime against a victim or victims in North Korea, Iran, or anywhere else in the world that anyone might consider to possess an unreasonably harsh or in any other way flawed legal system, it would not be for me - or whomsoever on my behalf - to bellyache against my being extradited to stand trial there.

It’s as clear as crystal to me, and I don’t understand why anyone would argue otherwise.

And what’s with calling these people “white-collar criminals”, with the inference that this makes their actions less serious and justifies their being treated with kid gloves? They are despicable criminals who prey upon gullible people and inflict great harm and misery on their hapless victims. Their crimes are every bit as serious as any crimes against property, and every possible effort should be made to apprehend them and, through whatever means of cross-border cooperation are available, to hit them with whatever sanctions of law are available when they are apprehended.

As long as the extradition process contains adequate safeguards to prevent it being abused for political purposes to secure the delivery of persons when there is no substantial evidence of their having committed the extraditable crimes of which they are accused, then there are no reasonable grounds for arguing against their extradition to the country where their crimes took effect, no matter where that may be. Is there any reason to believe that this condition has not been met in the case of these accused scammers?[/quote]

A couple of points/questions:

  1. Was their alledged phone scamming exclusive to China or did it include Taiwan? If it included Taiwan then surely Taiwan should have first crack at them. For example, if an American living overseas committed crimes in Russia and America, would America be happy if he was foricbly bundled off to Russia, without any negotiation?

  2. A 2009 Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting Agreement, “formalized criminal-justice cooperation and established a procedure for each side to return the other’s citizens in legal cases.” (NY Times) This is clearly a violation of that agreement. Why the sudden change?

  3. Several of them were found innocent by the High Court in Kenya.

Let’s see this for what it is - a deliberate, and alarming political escalation against Taiwan by China. And one that is wide open to further abuse. Given that voicing dissent is a serious crime in China, would it be ok for China to start rounding up Taiwanese nationals living overseas who criticize China? It’s terribly naive to think that this has got anything to do with justice.

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[quote=“dulan drift”]

A couple of points/questions:

  1. Was their alledged phone scamming exclusive to China or did it include Taiwan? If it included Taiwan then surely Taiwan should have first crack at them. For example, if an American living overseas committed crimes in Russia and America, would America be happy if he was foricbly bundled off to Russia, without any negotiation?

  2. A 2009 Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting Agreement, “formalized criminal-justice cooperation and established a procedure for each side to return the other’s citizens in legal cases.” (NY Times) This is clearly a violation of that agreement. Why the sudden change?

  3. Several of them were found innocent by the High Court in Kenya.

Let’s see this for what it is - a deliberate, and alarming political escalation against Taiwan by China. And one that is wide open to further abuse. Given that voicing dissent is a serious crime in China, would it be ok for China to start rounding up Taiwanese nationals living overseas who criticize China? It’s terribly naive to think that this has got anything to do with justice.[/quote]

  1. Why should Taiwan be given first crack at them? The Kenyan judicial authorities have no interest in deciding whether they might more fairly and kindly be extradited to a country other than that which came forward in the first place to request their extradition, and satisfied the requirements for that request to be granted. All the Kenyans needed to concern themselves with was whether a foreign government or foreign judicial authorities had presented a valid request for their extradition, and whether that request was accompanied by sufficient grounds for granting it. If there had been victims in Taiwan as well as in China, and if the Taiwanese judicial authorities had investigated such crimes, identified the location of the perpetrators, prepared the necessary evidence against them, and presented a request for extradition to the Kenyan authorities ahead of the PRC, then it would have been appropriate for Kenya to extradite them to Taiwan rather than the PRC. But the PRC acted to seek their extradition before Taiwan did, evidently presented a properly supported request for it, and therefore it was appropriate for Kenya to meet that request and extradite them to China. Their nationality is irrelevant. It would have been just the same if they had been Americans, Germans, or from wherever. It would have been more complicated if they had committed crimes against victims in both China and Taiwan, if both governments had simultaneously presented properly supported requests for their extradition, and if the requesting countries had been unable to agree between themselves where the suspects should be extradited to. That would have presented a thorny problem for the Kenyan authorities, to be determined judicially under applicable Kenyan and international law. But as far as I’m aware, that was not the case at all

  2. I’m quite familiar with the cross-strait joint crime-fighting and judicial mutual assistance agreement because I was commissioned to translate it for Taiwan’s government when it was signed. The main purpose of that agreement was for the judicial authorities on each side of the Taiwan Strait to repatriate each other’s citizens when those citizens were being sought by the other side for crimes committed under their laws. In other words, if a Taiwanese committed crimes in Taiwan and fled to China, China would help apprehend that person and send him back to Taiwan for prosecution, which rarely happened prior to the signing of this agreement. The agreement also provided for the two sides’ law enforcement authorities to cooperate in investigating and acting against cross-strait crime, particularly cases of telecom fraud where criminals on one side of the strait were targeting victims on the other side. There was an epidemic of such crime before the signing of the agreement, with tens of thousands of victims defrauded of staggering amounts of money, and it was a major cause of public concern. The main success of the agreement has been in bringing many such people to justice where before they were almost always able to evade it. The agreement is not in any way relevant to the situation of the Taiwanese scammers in Kenya.

  3. Not guilty of committing a crime against anyone in Kenya. That’s all that would matter in the Kenyan court. The scammers didn’t go to Kenya in order to scam Kenyans, but in order to scam people in China and perhaps elsewhere outside Kenya. It’s hardly likely that any of the victims would have been available in Kenya to testify against the scammers in a Kenyan court, and it would hardly be possible to prepare a persuasive case and obtain a conviction against them in such circumstances, even if local prosecutors had any interest in trying to do so. However, I doubt if any charges were ever brought against the scammers in Kenya. I suppose that they would have been arrested at the request of Chinese authorities with a view to requesting their extradition, and that the extradition would have been granted once the Chinese had established substantial grounds for it and the Kenyan prosecuting authorities had decided that there was no case for them to answer in the Kenyan courts (since none of the offences was committed against anyone in Kenya).

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[quote=“schwarzwald”][quote=“finley”]Which incident was that?

If it was the usual case of a Taiwanese fishing boat turning up where it shouldn’t (they’re notorious for it), the Japanese are within their rights to impound it. Crimes committed within a country’s physical jurisdiction are always tried under local law. It’s pretty normal.[/quote]

The story was big news in all papers, maybe you missed it. Taiwanese fishing boats are sometimes guilty of poaching in other countries’ waters, especially the PI. The recent incident with Japan though was clearly an illegal action by Japan, as explained in the relevant news stories. Even the Japanophile Taipei Times called it “brazen and reprehensible.”[/quote]

“Sometimes”? :laughing: I’d generally assume that Taiwanese fishermen are guilty of something at any given moment, so not much sympathy.

However, in that particular case, I can see why they were upset. They were pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

It’s a bit rich coming from the Japanese, who aren’t exactly renowned for their respect for marine life.

On the subject of the Kenyan extradition: nice to see an actual lawyer weighing in with some facts.

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Well, if you really are a lawyer, Omniloquacious, then God help your clients coz you are mounting arguements that are riddled with obvious factual errors. In fact there seems to be one in every utterance. I don’t have time to go through them all but here are a few…

Wrong: Firstly, China and Kenya don’t even have an extradition treaty, so how are you sure they “satisfied the requirements… and presented a valid request for their extradition”? In fact, they directly violated a Kenyan High Court order by forcibly putting them on a plane to China.

2.[quote] I doubt if any charges were ever brought against the scammers in Kenya.[/quote] Wrong: Charges were brought and they were found not guilty - in the High Court. Others were found guilty, For either verdict, charges would have first needed to have been “brought against the scammers” - you can see that, right?.

Wrong: The Taiwanese officials were in fact barred from even talking to them. Pretty hard to gather evidence when you can’t even talk to them.

Your writing is full of words like ‘i doubt’, ‘suppose’, ‘evidently’, and ‘as far as i am aware’ (not far, evidently!), which I suppose means you don’t know what you’re talking about. Let’s be honest, you weren’t at the meetings between Kenyan and Chinese officials and therefore you have got no idea whatsoever what happened in those meetings.

But just out of curiosity, what would all your evidentlys and supposedlys make of this:

Put that together with China’s growing fear of a rising national idenity in Taiwan and the active steps they are taking to suppress that then surely you will concede this has got nothing to do with justice.

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[quote=“dulan drift”]Well, if you really are a lawyer, Omniloquacious, then God help your clients because you are mounting arguements that are riddled with obvious factual errors. In fact there seems to be one in every utterance. I don’t have time to go through them all but here are a few…

Wrong: Firstly, China and Kenya don’t even have an extradition treaty, so how are you sure they “satisfied the requirements… and presented a valid request for their extradition”? In fact, they directly violated a Kenyan High Court order by forcibly putting them on a plane to China.

[/quote]

These are all issues that concern Kenya but not China. China requested extradition and Kenyan authorities complied. That is all that matters to China. In fact there is no requirement in international law that mandates an extradition treaty for extraditions to happen. Taiwan and the UK do not have an extradition treaty, yet Taiwan asks the UK to extradite Zain Dean. I’m getting tired with legal laymen polluting this thread.

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Dulan Drift, your comments display an extraordinary deficiency of understanding, and breathtaking arrogance that your layman’s threadbare knowledge of law trumps the expertise of all the lawyers and law professors who have unanimously stated that China has jurisdiction in this case under the territorial principle of international law. That is: Under the territorial principle of international law, China’s judicial system has jurisdiction in the case against the men from Taiwan who are accused of committing serious crimes of fraud against victims in China. Do you get that?

You must be aware, aren’t you, that there is such a thing as international law? Can you understand that it contains certain principles for determining something called “jurisdiction”, which is a big word that basically means the place where a person accused of a crime should be put on trial. Is this over your head, or are you still able to follow it? I’ll try to keep it as simple as possible.

In international law, there is a thing called the “territorial principle”, which decrees that a country can exercise jurisdiction in a criminal case based on the nationality of the crime’s victims. Are you still following this? In dumbed-down language, it means that when Mr X in country A commits a crime against a citizen of country B, then country B has the right under international law to try Mr X in its courts. Is that dumbed down enough for you?

So, in accordance with this very basic principle of jurisdiction, there are various arrangements among countries to help ensure that country B is able to bring Mr X to its territory to stand trial there. One of these is an international agreement called the Palermo Convention, and there’s also an important process called “extradition” that can be used for this purpose. Extradition can be achieved with or without an extradition agreement between the countries concerned, but can be greatly facilitated where such an agreement is in place.

I hope that my explanation can help reduce your ignorance on this subject. What happened was entirely in order under international law, and it’s hard to see how even the most mouth-foaming China hater could still argue otherwise after being relieved of such ignorance.

But if you don’t want to take my word for it, as your defamation of my professional competence suggests, you can easily find confirmation by a quick Google on the subject. I’m sure you should be able to find an explanation that confirms what I’ve written here in terms that even a child can understand. You’re welcome.

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“Despite the fact the crime was committed in Kenya, the victims are in mainland China. Therefore the mainland’s jurisdiction is recognised by the territorial principle in international law, in which the state can exercise its jurisdiction based on the nationality of the victims,” Xue Lei, an international law expert at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said. “It is the common handling of transnational criminal cases like this in international law.”

“Kenya and China, both of which are parties of the Palermo Convention, have the obligation to cooperate in [transnational] organised crime,” said Simon Young, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong.

Read the rest of it here . . .
scmp.com/news/china/policies … -taiwanese

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The response from the resident Counsel for the Prosecution reminded of this. Skip to 0:20.

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[quote=“Omniloquacious”]Dulan Drift, your comments display an extraordinary deficiency of understanding, and breathtaking arrogance (with) your layman’s threadbare knowledge of law …Can you understand? Are you still following this …. Is this over your head, or are you still able to follow it? I’ll try to keep it as simple as possible…in dumbed-down language… Is it dumbed down enough for you? …The most mouth-foaming China hater (couldn’t) argue otherwise after being relieved of such ignorance… I’m sure you should be able to find an explanation that confirms what I’ve written here in terms that even a child can understand.
You’re welcome(!)[/quote]

And what is it that you’ve written?

No, it wasn’t, and no they haven’t. That’s just patently false. Many lawyers oppose extraditions to China, both in this particular case, and as a general principle. In fact the Law Council of Australia has labelled extradition treaties with China “a joke” on the grounds that there “is no way to guarantee those extradited would be granted a fair trial, nor were there any effective measures to prevent torture.” canberratimes.com.au/world/o … ok6op.html

So one wonders, do you maybe protesteth too much? What might be the underlying reason for that?

Ah-ha. Now we’re getting closer to the truth. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, mate, but in case you’ve got some emperor’s clothing thing going on, stating that you are a lawyer is not in and by itself a winning argument. I get that if your arguments are debunked in a public forum that that could cause professional embarrassment, and probably feels like a personal insult, right? Or, if you happen to be an hysterical right-wing lawyer, then it even feels ‘DEFAMATORY’!

But it’s not – just plain, harmless facts. To be fair, I think your clients would be far more disturbed by your silly outburst of school-yard insults then anything I could ever say.

Finally you champion this cause:

I get that you are really worked up, but you’re missing the point. This is a moral issue, a human rights issue. What I am writing on Forumosa now is ‘committing a serious crime against victims in China’. You are arguing that China would have the right to bag and tag me from some third world country that they’re corruptly plundering and where the government will ride roughshod over a High Court ruling and do whatever they’re told. And then lock me up in jail indefinitely without trial?

So, I’m guessing you’re not one of those human rights type lawyers, right? LoL

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That’s a weird, and quite revealing thing to think, let alone say out loud.

This is a public forum, and there’s nothing in the Forumosa rules that says you have to be some right-wing lawyer to post on this thread or any other.

In China, on the other hand…

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Different story but similar principles. A Singapore Airlines steward killed a Singapore Airlines stewardess on her first trip to Los Angeles many years ago. The girl was from Taiwan. The crime was committed in the USA, but Singapore sought extradition and the perp was brought back to Singapore for trial. He was convicted not of murder but a much less charge and walked a free man not long after. Still free today . There was no doubt he killed her. He claimed IIRC it was consensual sex gone wrong. Didn’t seem likely.

The girl is still dead. The US should have tried him on the basis that the crime was committed in the USA. But I guess there was some sort of extradition agreement between governments.

The US just washed its hands of it.

The Kenyans just washed their hands of these white collar crims too. It may not even have been illegal scamming non Kenyan citizens while in Kenya. I don’t know. IF the calls were going to China to dupe Chinese people in a criminal manner under Chinese law. Then I don’t see where it is wrong for them to be deported to China. Be they Taiwanese, Chinese or Japanese or Americans.

Not completely unrelated. If you were to say, set up a terrorist organization in a country not particularly friendly to the USA and you targeted Americans you may find yourself a visit from Seal Team 6. Wouldn’t matter if you were Arab, French, Chinese , Islamic, Christian Jewish or HIndu. Or from the USA .

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[quote=“tommy525”]I don’t see where it is wrong for them to be deported to China. Be they Taiwanese, Chinese or Japanese or Americans.

If you were to say, set up a terrorist organization in a country not particularly friendly to the USA and you targeted Americans you may find yourself a visit from Seal Team 6. Wouldn’t matter if you were Arab, French, Chinese , Islamic, Christian Jewish or HIndu. Or from the USA .[/quote]

Tommy, you are putting up extreme cases to justify a law that is wide open to human rights abuse by a country that is famous for human rights abuse.

Even in the case of ‘terrorists’ the water still gets very murky, very quickly. For example, the Chinese government condemned the Dalai Lama as a terrorist. And why? Coz he prayed for some Tibetan clerics who self-immolated. theguardian.com/world/2011/o … -terrorism

As such, you are arguing that China has the right to forcibly kidnap the Dalai Lama and then take him back to China where he could be imprisoned indefinitely without trial, tortured, or even executed.

Are you really ok with that?

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Uhm no. But these are phone fraudsters. They were not making ice-cream and sodas for needy kids when the Kenyan police busted in, one presumes. Now if they were pure as the driven snow, then one would guess they would not be in this pickle.

If China decides the Pope should be brought to China forcibly that would be equally preposterous.

My examples, though wild are less wild then using the Dalai Lama. He wasn’t there with the telephone gang was he?

:stuck_out_tongue:

p.s. China abuses human (and animal ) rights for sure. But one would imagine that these calls were being traced to Kenya and the Kenya police were brought in to apprehend the suspects.

There is the smoke of complacency here, not the morning mist of nature.

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And Tommy, that’s the point right there. China decides. And who is going to control them if next time they do decide to snatch an accused terrorist, such as the Dalai Lama, from some politically compromised country? No-one. Not me, not you, not any of our esteemed lawyer friends on this thread.

Nobody likes phone scammers (though remember, most of them haven’t been found guilty of anything yet), me included, but there is a bigger principle at stake here than this one case.

This a a classic Pandora’s Box situation. To be handing China unchecked power to snatch individuals from around the globe for supposed crimes in China, where there’s no guarantee of a fair trial, or any trial at all in some cases - that’s a very slippery slope.

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It’s the reality of the world we live in. Governments can charge you with crimes and arrange to have you extradited back to their country for trial. Legal standards available for your protection vary and if I had to hazard a guess, are probably not at their peak in Kenya. That sucks, but Taiwanese aren’t going to get an exemption here, nor should they. Right now, no box has been opened that wasn’t opened long ago. These guys aren’t political. They’re charged with a serious crime, seemingly with fair cause.

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Exactly. One has to use some sense. Are we talking about China deciding the POPE or the Dalai Lama needs to be arrested and brought to China or are we talking about phone fraudsters? Yes, we are talking about phone fraudsters.

No point talking about mango icecream if it is chocolate we are seeing. Both are icecream, but we got the chocolate icecream in front of us, not the mango.

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[quote=“tommy525”]Exactly. One has to use some sense. Are we talking about China deciding the Pope or the Dalai Lama needs to be arrested and brought to China or are we talking about phone fraudsters? Yes, we are talking about phone fraudsters.

No point talking about mango icecream if it is chocolate we are seeing. Both are icecream, but we got the chocolate icecream in front of us, not the mango.[/quote]

Sure, but i don’t think you are seeing the forest for the trees. The exact same principle that is being used to abduct the chocolate ice cream today can just as easily be used to abduct the mango ice cream tomorrow.

In fact, it’s not the ‘flavour of the day’ that’s important - it’s the principle, and the very dangerous precedent that this case sets for the future.

And China won’t give a stuff whether ‘we are talking about it’ or not.

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So, once more, what offenses are heinous enough for China (or any country, actually) to get free rein of this kind, and which are not? What if you defraud 10 people? Is that enough? Or 100? What if you’re the new guy who’s just checking the place out? What if you’re the pizza delivery guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time? What if you kill someone? What if you swing at a Chinese guy, miss, and hit a Kenyan? Does China still get you? What if you bruise him on the way through?

It’s too slippery a slope, this assumption of no need for due process.

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There was due process. African-style due process. China would hardly be the first state actor to take advantage of that continent’s abject failure to get its act together. Consider, say, the complicity of multinational oil companies (and the governments which give them the nod) in Nigeria’s ongoing fuckuppery, or the equivalent situation with DRCs mining “industry”.

Anyway, “due process” is ongoing: they will, presumably, be tried. If the perps don’t like China’s views on justice, I’d suggest that’s their own silly fault. Extraditing people like this must cost a substantial amount of time and money, not to mention the cost of putting them on trial. China might have deep pockets, but I doubt they’d bother doing that without some definite purpose, and evidence that they’d got the right target.

Does anyone seriously believe China would attempt extraordinary rendition on the Pope or the Dalai Lama? Frankly, in the former case, they’d probably be doing the world a favour, but I just can’t see it happening. Whatever else they might be, the Chinese leadership are not stupid. They know the political fallout from such an act would outweigh any possible benefit. As for kidnapping (say) ordinary Taiwanese people who say mean things about them: well, I suppose it could happen. The answer to that would be not to go to Africa to do it, or other places with weak judicial systems and/or financial dependence on the well-stuffed wallet of Big Brother China.

The world is a shitty place. Not everyone plays by the rules. Come to think of it, very few people play by the rules. Human history is an ongoing struggle against those who don’t play by the rules, and sometimes the only realistic option is to cover your ass and have a plan B. If you’re intent on criminal activity, you probably need a plan J and K as well.

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I don’t have a massive problem with China extraditing these fraudster scum after learning more about the background . Taiwan failed to deal with their own criminals.
It will hopefully curtail their evil activities. This highly organized crime at large scale and they need to have the book and the whole hammer thrown at them.
If China tries to extradite ‘ordinary’ or '‘political’ Taiwanese for other purposes then I will sit up and take notice.