Today, on International Human Rights Day, groups will hold vigils and celebrations around the globe to mark 60 years since the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
It is a day to pause and appreciate the freedoms we have, note the progress we have made since the Martial Law-era and remember those who live or lived under oppression.
In Hong Kong on Sunday, members of Independent PEN took to the streets early, calling for the principles of the UDHR to be respected and for China to release around 50 writers known to be imprisoned because of the words they dared to air.
That is a call protesters could hardly have made in communist China without risking detention themselves. Six decades after the UDHR’s inception, the principles enshrined in it — as well as in the UN human rights conventions that Beijing has since signed — carry little or no weight with Chinese authorities.
Last week, reports emerged that China had launched another of its infamous “strike hard” campaigns, this time to renew its stranglehold on a media environment that it thinks is getting out of hand. While the campaign will apparently target the domestic media to ensure that reports do not fuel the country’s swelling social unrest, the foreign press can hardly hope for better treatment.
News of the campaign followed on the heels of two reports at the end of last month that Chinese authorities violated the lofty freedoms they promised foreign journalists during the Summer Olympics — a set of relaxed guidelines that Beijing reaffirmed after the Games ended.
On Nov. 28, a British correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor was detained while covering a story about one of China’s countless underground churches — considered a scourge by Beijing despite its repeated assertions that it respects freedom of religion. Peter Ford was taken to an airport in Henan Province and sent back to Beijing immediately after being questioned for three hours, Reporters without Borders said.
Even more disturbing were reports that a Belgian TV crew were assaulted a day earlier for covering treatment of AIDS patients — also in Henan Province. The crew said they were pulled from their car, their videotapes and reporters’ notes taken and that they were beaten up.
The attack would hardly be the first on a journalist in China, where at least 10 foreign reporters were roughed up during the Olympics. It is not known how many domestic media workers might regularly meet such harassment. But the news was particularly symbolic of Beijing’s well-documented hypocrisy on matters of human rights, as it came just three days before World AIDS Day. To mark that day, Dec. 1, China held events designed to remake its notorious image as a regime that discriminates against AIDS patients and brutally represses open dialogue on the spread of the disease within its borders.
Every human being is entitled to the rights set forth in the UDHR. Unfortunately, the world remains a place where those rights must be fought for. As Taiwan again finds itself in a disquieting position in which the government must be reminded of its duties to respect rights that the nation had only recently begun to take for granted, we would do well to reflect on the harsh reality in neighboring countries and refocus our eyes on the goal.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS