A Japanese man was expelled from Taiwan on Monday after he filmed himself and another Japanese visitor holding up a Chinese Communist flag and proclaiming “Taiwan belongs to China” at a shopping district in Taipei.
According to Taiwanese officials, both individuals were Japanese nationals who took advantage of visa-free travel to Taiwan. They performed their demonstration at the busy Ximending shopping district in Taipei, using a microphone to amplify their voices as they proclaimed their “love” for the Chinese Communist regime.
The Japanese men uploaded video of their demonstration to several social media accounts, including China’s heavily censored microblogging platform Weibo.
China’s state-run Global Times found a Weibo account that appears to belong to one of the men, who gave his real name as “Hiroyuki Tanaka.” He claimed to be a recent graduate of Waseda University in Tokyo who has studied and worked in China. In one of his older Weibo posts, he claimed to be married to a Taiwanese woman.
The Tanaka account posted a video of him making declarations such as “Taiwan is China’s territory, this is a fact” and “I absolutely support the one-China principle.”
In another video, both of the Japanese men made statements such as “We are Japanese, we love China” and “We like China very much,” speaking in both Japanese and Chinese.
Taiwan’s National Immigration Agency (NIA) said on Tuesday the other Japanese man called himself “Aira Todomi.”
A number of angry Taiwanese social media users reported Todomi’s videos on TikTok to the NIA. The agency deemed him to be in violation of Taiwan’s Immigration Act, which stipulates that foreigners can be denied entry to the island if they are “believed to endanger national interests, public security, public order, or the good customs of the State.”
The NIA said Tanaka was deported on Monday morning. Todomi left Taiwan of his own volition after recording the video, so he would be barred from re-entry.
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