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Taipei, Mar 1 (EFE).- The Taiwanese government on Friday spoke against Kuomintang Vice President Andrew Hsia for criticism he made after meeting with a senior official of the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai.
Hsia held a meeting Thursday with Song Tao, head of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the China’s Central Committee, who criticized the island’s government for the death of two Chinese fishermen after a persecution of the Taiwan Coast Guard near the Kinmen Islands.
Hsia sent his condolences to the families of victims on behalf of the KMT and urged Taiwan’s governing Democratic Progressive Party to “find the truth” about the incident “as soon as possible.”
In response, the island’s Prime Minister Chen Chien-jen, said Hsia’s statements were “disconcerting” and “unfair” to Taiwanese Coast Guard officers, who applied the law “in accordance with international practice.”
“Hsia’s statement is not appropriate,” Chen said, adding that both sides of the Strait should adopt a “pragmatic” and “slander-free” approach in handling this case.
In a statement posted on its official Facebook account, the party said Hsia “should defend” Taiwanese Coast Guard officers, instead of falling into the rhetoric of the United Front Department of Labor, an entity that seeks to unite factions that support the Chinese government.
“If the KMT is truly Taiwanese, it should defend the rights and interests of Coast Guard personnel and fishermen, and not agree with China,” the statement read.
The meeting between Hsia and Song took place in a particularly conflictive context in the area of the Kinmen Islands, an archipelago controlled by Taiwan located a few kilometers from the southeastern Chinese city of Xiamen.
These islands have been the subject of multiple disputes between China and Taiwan over the decades, among which the massive bombing of 1958 stood out, when the Chinese Army opened fire on the archipelago in the context of the second Taiwan Strait crisis. EFE
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