At about 10:00 p.m. on May 12, 1988, a Chinese civil aviation Boeing 737 passenger plane flying from Xiamen to Guangzhou was hijacked and landed at Qingquangang Air Base in Taichung. The hijackers were Kunming workers — Zhang Guoqing and Long Guiyun.
More than five hours later, at the request of China Civil Aviation, the Taiwan authorities allowed the plane to fly back to Xiamen from Taichung. All 117 passengers and crew members on board — all but two hijackers — returned randomly to the mainland.
This is the first time that a mainland civil aviation passenger plane has been hijacked and landed in Taiwan, and this serious hijacking incident has set off a lot of waves on the island of Taiwan, and has also attracted the attention of the mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and international public opinion.
As soon as Zhang Guoqing and Long Guiyun stepped down the gangway, they were warmly welcomed by the Taiwan Air Force and immediately received warmly.
The next day, the "information bureau chief" of the taiwan platform said at both press conferences that after a thorough investigation, it was found that the hijacking incident was purely a freedom-seeking incident, and decided to allow the two young people to take refuge.
With regard to the means of hijacking, Shao declared: The two did not have any passengers or personnel on board the plane, did not use any violence, and only used a fake pistol and a bottle that was not actually contained in explosives to achieve the purpose of seizing the plane and running for freedom. Taiwan's "JoongAng Daily" and "Lianhe Pao" further claimed that there was no coercion or violence on the plane, and they told the captain to change course with a gentle attitude. It seems that Zhang and Long have nothing to do with violence.
Of course, anyone with the slightest common sense knows that the hijacking must be accompanied by violent threats and actions, and no hijacker can convince the crew and full passengers that to say that it has nothing to do with violence is obviously just self-deception.
In fact, the hijacking was a premeditated act of terrorist violence.
Anti-hijacking drill
According to the recollections of the crew and passengers, about 10 minutes after the plane took off from Xiamen Airport, Zhang and Long began to hijack the plane. They held murder weapons in the cabin and shouted: "Don't move, if you move again, you will blow up the machine." "Forcibly wrapped the curtain around the two flight attendants and pushed into the service room. Then broke into the cockpit, reflexively locked the hatch, forcibly twisted off the headsets of the crew members, cut off the connection between the plane and the ground, and put plastic bags on the heads of the pilot Wu Yulin and the air attendant Wu Zhongliang.
The gangsters came prepared, they drew a flight sketch in advance, and ordered the captain: "Don't move around, fly Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 140 degrees!" "When the crew piloted the plane circling over Guangzhou and Hong Kong, looking for an opportunity to land, the gangsters sensed that the flight time did not match, once again threatened to blow up the plane, forced the captain to change course with a dagger, and rudely pushed the throttle to the maximum gear, so that the airspeed of the aircraft reached the limit, and if the aircraft was accelerated again, there was a danger of disintegration.
According to the recollections of passenger Zhang Yimin and others, shortly after the plane took off, one of the two hijackers suddenly pretended to vomit and entered the front cabin bathroom, while the other took medicine oil and tablets from the flight attendant and pretended to come forward to help, and then the two took the flight attendant without crashing into the captain's cockpit door, holding a pistol and grenade to threaten the captain.
International law recognizes the hijacking of civil airliners as an unforgivable and serious crime. Chen Changwen, associate professor of Taiwan Chengchi University, said: If this incident is confirmed to be a hijacking, according to public international law and civil aviation law, the hijackers should be prosecuted and punished to safeguard the safety of civil aviation.
Yang Hongji, an associate professor at Soochow University, said: The authorities should immediately and openly hand over the hijackers to the judicial unit.
Even "legislator" Huang Quanwen said: The hijackers should be handed over to justice, so as not to be seen by the international community as encouraging air violence and air robbers.
Chinese scholars far abroad have also made remarks one after another, demanding that the Taiwan authorities not handle this incident by politicized means and should respect international law and practice.
Various newspapers and periodicals in Hong Kong and Macao have published articles criticizing the Taiwan authorities' actual attitude of asylum and demanding that the hijackers be returned to the mainland or given judicial treatment in the local areas:
This is obviously a violent hijacking of a civil aviation passenger plane, and Taipei must give severe punishment for the crime of hijacking according to the Hague Convention - Hong Kong Economic Daily
Regardless of their motives, the two hijackers were always hijackers who took more than 100 innocents hostage in an act of violence for personal gain. If the air mob is used as heroes to promote, the civil aviation airliners on both sides of the taiwan strait will become the most dangerous fighting arena in the world.
Even the spokesman of the US State Department said in a statement on the morning of the 13th that they should let the two hijackers win the first victory in a court composed of strict laws, or be extradited to China. We urge Taiwan to comply with its obligations as a signatory to the Hague Agreement on Hijacking, whose conduct should be subject to legal constraints and penalties, regardless of the motives of the hijackers.
Under the strong pressure of internal and external public opinion, the Taiwan authorities had to announce that Zhang and Long would be handed over to justice.
After trial, Zhang and Long were sentenced to 7 years in prison for "endangering the safety of flights or their facilities by rape, coercion or other means."
This result seems to have brought the criminals to justice, but in fact it is just a pretense of the Taiwan authorities and a formality.
Although the Taiwan authorities transferred the second offender to the judiciary, they still showed obvious bias. According to the law, there are two provisions corresponding to the conduct of the second offender. The first is "whoever hijacks an aircraft by rape, coercion or other means shall be sentenced to death or life imprisonment", which stipulates that the crime of "hijacking an aircraft" is extremely severe and there is no suspended sentence; the second is "whoever endangers the safety of the flight or its facilities by rape, coercion or other means shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of 7 years or less, criminal detention or a fine of not less than 20,000 yuan but not more than 70,000 yuan." "The penalty for this offence is lighter and punishable by a suspended sentence.
Zhang and Long were transferred to the local procuratorate by the authorities on the second charge, and it was obvious that they were doing everything possible to exonerate them and wanted to judicially deny that their behavior was a hijacking.
Civil aviation passenger aircraft is a means of transport of an international nature, and hijacking is an international crime. It is entirely necessary to deal with this matter in accordance with the principles of international conventions. Regrettably, the Taiwan authorities have not genuinely complied with international conventions, such as article 7 of the Hague Convention, which stipulates that suspected aircraft seizures must be extradited or prosecuted. The mainland side also called the Taiwan side and demanded that the Taiwan authorities return the two criminals to the mainland or have the Taiwan authorities severely punish them in accordance with international civil aviation management.
However, the Taiwan authorities have not returned the criminals to the mainland, nor have they intended to severely punish them, but have tried their best to exonerate them judicially.
This perfunctory public opinion and connivance with criminals has aroused public dissatisfaction, and many media have pierced the tricks of the Kuomintang authorities to the point. The "Democratic Years Weekly" published an article entitled "The Kuomintang Connived at The Terrorist Elements," saying: Although the KMT has also transferred Zhang and Long to justice, its basic practices and propaganda methods to the outside world are in the opposite direction, making people feel that the transfer of justice is only a blindfold, and when people with a clear eye look at them, they have a rather strong color of encouragement.
Indeed, after Zhang and Long were sentenced, the two hijackers were quickly commuted, released, and allowed to stay in Taiwan, where they could apply for household registration after 4 consecutive years of residence.
This practice, called punishment, was actually encouraging, gave hope to criminals on the mainland, and their hijacking has continued unabated since then, reaching a peak in 1993.
According to some data, in this year Chinese mainland civil aviation had a total of 21 hijacking incidents, 10 successful hijackings, the hijacking destination was Taiwan, and there was a wave of hijackings over the strait that stunned the whole world.
This is precisely the uncontrollable evil consequence brought to themselves by the Taiwan authorities' self-restraint behavior since Zhang Guoqing and Long Guiyun first hijacked a civil aviation passenger plane to Go to Taiwan in 1988.
In fact, the evil consequences have already occurred in 1990, when the gangster Jiang Xiaofeng hijacked a plane at Guangzhou Baiyun Airport and tried to fly to Taipei, the situation was out of control, resulting in the collision of three planes at the airport, resulting in the death and injury of more than 100 people, including a Taiwan tour group, including passengers from the United States, Hong Kong, Macao and other places.
The Taiwan authorities have finally realized that these hijackers are by no means so-called "righteous soldiers" but real criminals.
In fact, the reason why these hijackers ventured to flee to Taiwan is precisely because most of them have either committed crimes or are heavily indebted on the mainland. For example, Liu Baocai and Huang Shugang, who hijacked the plane on April 6, 1993, one is wanted by the local public security department for gambling, smuggling and selling guns; the other is afraid of embezzling more than 200,000 yuan of huge money, and he is hollowing out his mind to prepare to abscond. Another example is Zhang Wenlong, who hijacked the plane on August 10, 1993, because of gambling debts, and took the risk of hijacking the plane in order to evade debts.
It was precisely the connivance of the Taiwan authorities for the hijackers that made them feel that they had an opportunity to take advantage of the opportunity, and when they went to Taiwan, their previous deeds could be written off and a "new life" could begin.
For example, Zhuo Changren and others, who were touted as "righteous soldiers" in those years, after this criminal gang hijacked a plane and flew to Seoul in 1983, the Taiwan authorities constantly intervened, so that they were sent to Taiwan less than a year after being imprisoned in South Korea, and were once treated preferentially by the Taiwan side, but the criminals were criminals. With the case of Zhuo Changren and others, Taiwan's public opinion and people also deeply resent these hijackings.
The Taiwan authorities finally woke up and began to contact and consult with the mainland to study how to curb the hijacking incident. Because the two sides of the strait need time to consult on sensitive issues such as jurisdiction, and the aftermath of Taiwan's connivance with hijackers continues. The criminals still cling to the mentality of luck, feeling that while the two sides of the strait have not yet signed an agreement, they can still get the previous treatment if they hijack the plane to Taiwan.
However, their illusions were shattered by the agreement reached on November 5, 1993, between the Association for Cross-Strait Relations on the Mainland and the Taiwan Strait Exchange Foundation in Xiamen to discuss the repatriation of hijackers.
The opinion stipulates that when a hijacker is a criminal offender and one party's aircraft is hijacked to the other party, the other party shall transfer the offender to the owner of the civil airliner for handling.
Although it was only agreed in November 931, this did not affect the prosecution of previous cases. Previously, the hijackers who fled to Taiwan have been repatriated to the mainland to face the trial they deserve.
The year 1993 was the peak of the hijacking and the year in which hijacking was declared to an end. This year's hijackers were all sentenced in Taiwan without exception, and they were not allowed to stay in Taiwan after completing their sentences.
For example, after Huang Shugang, Liu Baocai, Zhang Wenlong, and others were repatriated to the mainland after being released from prison in Taiwan, Huang Shugang was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment for hijacking aircraft, 9 years' imprisonment for the crime of usurpation of office, and 20 years' imprisonment for joint execution; Zhang Wenlong was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment for the crime of hijacking aircraft.
Those who thought at that time that they could evade their criminal responsibilities through violent and terrorist means, and who even went on to find a "good way out" in Taiwan, responded to the old saying that "the legal net is restored, and the negligence is not leaked."
For example, on December 8, 1993, Gao Jun, who hijacked a plane and landed at Taipei Taoyuan Airport, lost money in the mainland, lost money in debt, and dreamed of escaping to Taiwan to start over. When he landed in Taiwan, what awaited him was handcuffs and a prison cart, and Gao Jun thought that this was only temporary, and when he saw the prosecutor, he foolishly asked himself when he would be free. The other party directly informed: it will be sentenced for a long time!
In the end, Gao Jun waited for a 10-year sentence, and he regretted it in prison, and he could not bear life in prison. According to Taiwanese media reports, Gao Jun committed suicide in prison "in a strange way, causing the people in Taipei Prison to turn their backs on their horses." "He has recorded as many as seven suicides.
Gao Jun became a hot potato in prison, the Taiwan authorities strengthened supervision over him, Gao Jun was even more bitter, he took the risk of coming to Taiwan not to go to prison, since they are all in prison, why not go to prison in their hometown, but also have to run to Taiwan, where they are not familiar with life.
Since Taiwan does not accept him, of course, it is still his hometown, and he hopes in various extreme ways to attract the attention of the authorities and repatriate him to the mainland.
But the crime has been committed, and he can get him back if he wants to. He was not repatriated until 2001, after serving an eight-year sentence in Taiwan, when he was relieved that police officers from the Public Security Bureau were waiting for him at the airport. On December 8 of that year, the Qingdao Municipal Intermediate People's Court convicted Gao Jun of hijacking an aircraft and sentenced him to 12 years in prison and deprivation of political rights for three years.
The sentence was calculated from 8 December 1993 and was released from prison on 7 December 2005.
Hearing this result, Gao Jun said in court that he would not appeal, and he said: Today I can have such an ending, and I would like to thank the government for its leniency and giving me the opportunity to regain a new life. Although in another 4 years, Qingdao does not know what it will become, and it may take a long time to adapt after going out, but I must become a useful person to society through my own efforts. The lesson this time is too profound! ”
So far, the issue of repatriation of hijackers, which was once boiling over between the two sides of the strait and had not been successfully delayed, was finally resolved with the actual action taken by the relevant parties on both sides of the strait to repatriate them.
Since the repatriation operations began between the two sides of the strait, the number of hijackings occurring between the two sides of the strait has decreased markedly, until it has finally disappeared.