Racketeers threaten to burn down Taiwanese kindergartens

Kindergartens and daycare centres in the central and southern parts of the island have recently received letters threatening arson unless deposits of 50,000 New Taiwan dollars (1,500 U.S. dollars) are made to a bank account in mainland China, according to the report in the China Times.

To date, about 30 kindergartens and daycare centres are known by police to have received the threatening letter in the central and southern cities of Taichung and Tainan. At least one centre has already paid the extortion money.

However, a councilor from Taichung said he believed that more than 200 letters had been received in his city alone but that most kindergartens were afraid to report it to police, for fear that parents would withdraw their children from the centres.

The councilor said the threatening letters all had a Taipei city postmark dated March 26 and instructed the kindergartens to transfer the money to a bank account in Yunnan province on the mainland. Taichung police said a similar incident occurred five or six years ago and had also been directed against kindergartens in Taichung county.

Although the kindergartens were not attacked, police were unable to solve the case. The Straits Exchange Foundation, Taiwan's semi-official body responsible for handling cross-strait affairs, has offered to help with the incident and has contacted its mainland counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, and police in Yunnan province.

Local media said the extortion racket is seeking to use the current political impasse between Taiwan and mainland China to avoid detection.

(la/dpa)