DENPASAR, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian immigration authorities have detained 103 Taiwanese people after a raid at a villa on the resort island of Bali, officials said Friday.
They were accused of misusing their visas and residence permits and are suspected of possible cybercrimes, Safar Muhammad Godam, director of immigration supervision and enforcement at the Ministry of Law and Human Rights told reporters at a news conference.
Godam said Indonesian authorities cannot charged them with conducting cybercrime. “During the inspection, we know that they are targeting people in Malaysia. They did their activities in Indonesia but the victims are in other countries, so it is very difficult to fulfill the criminal elements,” Godam said.
He added the 103 will be deported soon.
Immigration authorities conducted the raid Wednesday at a villa in Kukuh village in Tabanan district and detained 91 men and 12 women. Computers and cellphones were also seized, they said.
“They are suspected of not having documents and misuse of immigration permits. Currently, the possibility of cybercrime is being investigated based on the number of computers and cellphones found at the scene,” Silmy Karim, the director general of immigration, said in a statement Thursday.
Authorities distributed photos showing dozens of detainees lying on their stomachs next to a swimming pool and the three-story villa. All are being held at a detention center in Denpasar, Bali, officials said.
Authorities said they are investigating whether the group might have ties to international syndicates.
Indonesia’s Directorate General of Immigration plans to carry out another joint operation to monitor foreign nationals in Bali. It aims to ensure that foreigners are staying on the island in accordance with regulations and to maintain order and security.
Tarigan reported from Jakarta.
In this photo released by the Directorate General of Immigration of Indonesia's Justice and Human Rights Ministry (Ditjen Imigrasi), foreign nationals from China, Taiwan and Malaysia who are detained on allegations of conducting cybercrime and visa violations are lined up on the ground following a raid on a villa in Tabanan, Bali, Indonesia, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (Ditjen Imigrasi via AP)
In this photo released by the Directorate General of Immigration of Indonesia's Justice and Human Rights Ministry (Ditjen Imigrasi), foreign nationals from China, Taiwan and Malaysia who are detained on allegations of conducting cybercrime and visa violations are lined up on the ground following a raid on a villa in Tabanan, Bali, Indonesia, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (Ditjen Imigrasi via AP)
SADO, Japan (AP) — Japan will go ahead with a memorial ceremony on Sunday near the Sado Island Gold Mines, despite South Korea’s last-minute boycott of the event that highlighted tensions between the neighbors over the issue of Korean forced laborers at the site before and during World War II.
South Korea’s absence at Sunday’s memorial, to which Seoul government officials and Korean victims’ families were invited, is a major setback in the rapidly improving ties between the two countries, which since last year have set aside their historical disputes to prioritize U.S.-led security cooperation.
The Sado mines were listed in July as a UNESCO World Heritage site after Japan moved past years of disputes with South Korea and reluctantly acknowledged the mines’ dark history, promising to hold an annual memorial service for all victims, including hundreds of Koreans who were mobilized to work in the mines.
On Saturday, South Korea announced it would not attend the event, saying it was impossible to settle unspecified disagreements between the two governments in time.
Masashi Mizobuchi, an assistant press secretary in Japan’s Foreign Ministry, said Japan has been in communication with Seoul and called the South Korean decision “disappointing.”
The ceremony will be held as planned later Sunday at a facility near the mines.
The 16th-century mines on the island of Sado, off Japan’s north-central coast, operated for nearly 400 years before closing in 1989 and were once the world’s largest gold producer.
Historians say about 1,500 Koreans were mobilized to Sado as part of Japan’s use of hundreds of thousands of Korean laborers, including those forcibly brought from the Korean Peninsula, at Japanese mines and factories to make up for labor shortages because most working-age Japanese men had been sent to battlefronts across Asia and the Pacific.
Japan’s government has maintained that all wartime compensation issues between the two countries were resolved under a 1965 normalization treaty.
South Korea had long opposed the listing of the site as World Heritage on the grounds that the Korean forced laborers, despite their key role in the wartime mine production, were missing from the exhibition. Seoul's backing for Sado came as South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol prioritized improving relations with Japan.
The Japanese government said Sunday’s ceremony was to pay tribute to “all workers” who died at the mines, but would not spell out inclusion of Korean laborers — part of what critics call a persistent policy of whitewashing Japan’s history of sexual and labor exploitation before and during the war.
Preparation for the event by local organizers remained unclear until the last minute, which was seen as a sign of Japan’s reluctance to face its wartime brutality.
Japan’s government said on Friday that Akiko Ikuina — a parliamentary vice minister who reportedly visited Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine in August 2022, weeks after she was elected as a lawmaker — would attend the ceremony. Japan’s neighbors view Yasukuni, which commemorates 2.5 million war dead including war criminals, as a symbol of Japan's past militarism.
Ikuina belonged to a Japanese ruling party faction of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who led the whitewashing of Japan's wartime atrocities in the 2010s during his leadership.
For instance, Japan says the terms “sex slavery” and “forced labor” are inaccurate and insists on the use of highly euphemistic terms such as “comfort women” and “civilian workers” instead.
South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul said Saturday that Ikuina’s Yasukuni visit was an issue of contention between the countries’ diplomats.
“That issue and various other disagreements between diplomatic officials remain unresolved, and with only a few hours remaining until the event, we concluded that there wasn’t sufficient time to resolve these differences,” Cho said in an interview with MBN television.
Some South Koreans had criticized Yoon’s government for supporting the event without securing a clear Japanese commitment to highlight the plight of Korean laborers. There were also complaints over South Korea agreeing to pay for the travel expenses of Korean victims’ family members to Sado.
Kim reported from Seoul, South Korea.
Visitors look at display at Sado Kinzan Gold Mine historic site in Sado, Niigata prefecture, Japan, Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
