A Taiwan resident has been arrested for human smuggling after attempting to help a mainland man board an international flight at Beijing Capital International Airport on Sunday, police said.
Police said they became suspicious that the Taiwan resident surnamed Lin was traveling alone.
Lin was returning to Taipei via Hong Kong - a normal path for Taiwan residents - but it was considered rare that on his first journey to the mainland, Lin was not traveling with a group. Additionally, he was not carrying any gifts, the news website Sohu.com reported yesterday.
The police also discovered the man had a Taiwan travel document but not a Taiwan ID card, the Beijing Times said.
The police suspected Lin might be assisting someone else to illegally leave the country so they allowed him to pass through immigration control and had him followed by two plainclothes officers.
Lin then approached a man waiting for another flight and the two men went into a smoking room together. The officers immediately arrested the two men and found a fake passport on the mainlander.
Lin allegedly told the officers he had been advised by relatives that he could earn some money helping others to board international flights, but had been caught on his first attempt. Beijing General Station for Exit and Entry Frontier Inspection said in early November they had apprehended 387 people illegally crossing Chinese borders in the first nine months of the year, 39 percent lower than the same period one year earlier. Almost 70 percent used fake passports or travel documents.
However, the number of cases in which citizens helped others to pass without proper authorization rose by 40 percent year-on-year, Li Wei, a senior officer with the Beijing immigration control told China Youth Daily. Li said the police found five assisted human smuggling cases in 10 days in May.
In September, a foreigner who tried to help a Chinese citizen get access into Europe by swapping boarding passes was also detained at the airport.
The Chinese citizen, who had a ticket to Hong Kong, reportedly walked around the waiting room holding the novel, Da Vinci Code.
When he met a foreign man also holding a copy of the novel, they were both apprehended by police.
Source: chinadaily.com.cn/
No comments:
Post a Comment