Frankfurt: Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said Thursday it is looking into an incident in which a Taiwanese woman was accused of being a Chinese fugitive and held by police for four hours at Germany’s Frankfurt Airport.
According to Focus Taiwan, book publisher Cheng Ting arrived at Frankfurt Airport early Monday to attend the Frankfurt Book Fair but was stopped at passport control after failing an automated face identification check. Officials asked for additional identification and questioned if she was the person in the passport photo, which she explained might have changed due to braces and dental surgeries.
Cheng was then taken by police to a room for questioning, where they denied her request to contact diplomatic missions and compared her face to a wanted Chinese fugitive. An officer accused her of being Chinese and claimed her passport was fake because the number could not be found, despite her repeated explanation that she was Taiwanese.
“They started shouting at me [in English]. ‘Who are you really? What’s your purpose here? I was left shaking. It was like a Netflix crime show,” Cheng said. While inspecting her phone, police found she had posted an Instagram story on her way to the questioning room, behavior they deemed unlikely for a fugitive, and also discovered a membership card with an English signature matching her passport, confirming her identity.
After four hours, Cheng was released and told by police that the incident would be treated “as if it never happened” with no negative record. However, she said she was also asked to sign “consent to restriction of freedom” waiver forms in German, English, and Simplified Chinese without a clear explanation of her rights.
“I don’t know why it took so long-all they had to do was pick up the phone and call the Taiwanese representative’s office,” Cheng said. At a Legislative hearing Thursday, Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said Taiwan’s representative office in Frankfurt has been asked to seek clarification from German authorities about the incident. Meanwhile, Eric Huang, head of MOFA’s Department of European Affairs, said that the representative office has reached out to Cheng to provide assistance.
