A weak US response to the recent upsurge in China's prosecution of human rights activists could embolden Beijing to take a more militant attitude toward Taiwan, two Washington-based human rights campaigners said on Friday.
The campaigners are Wei Jing-sheng (魏京生), a Chinese dissident who spent nearly 15 years in prison for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party in the late 1970s, and Morton Sklar, executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA, which takes legal action against human rights violators.
Wei and Sklar made their comments as China imposed a sentence of more than four years on a blind human rights lawyer, Chen Guang-cheng (陳光誠), and a three year sentence on a New York Times reporter, Zhao Yan (趙岩).
Wei and Sklar hit out at the State Department and the Bush administration for their "failure" to raise strenuous objections to those two prosecutions and to the overall crackdown on human rights in China generally.
"The human rights issue and the issue across the [Taiwan] Strait are tightly related," Wei said in remarks translated into English.
"When the international community reduces its pressure on China regarding human rights issues and arms proliferation, then you can see that the communist regime is moving forward in this regard about `liberating' Taiwan in a military way," he said, using the Chinese term for unification with Taiwan.
"On the contrary, if the international community puts more pressure on China regarding human rights violations and proliferation issues, then China has to put aside its plans [on] the Taiwan issue," Wei said.
"So, the US government's standing back in condemning the Chinese government's human rights record is a very dangerous act, which probably means encouraging the Chinese government to move forward in its military expansion [against Taiwan]," he said.
Sklar agreed.
"There is very little doubt that, by failing to speak out against the government of China's human rights abuses more forcefully, our position is weakened as it relates to the belief that we are serious about the support that we provide and have provided for many years to the government of Taipei," he said.
"We should be pointing out to the US government that failure to speak out against human rights abuses by the government of China is, in fact, negatively affecting our foreign policy in terms of our support of Taiwan," he said.
Wei and Sklar made their comments after speaking at a Falun Gong press conference to protest the reported arrest last week of Gao Zhisheng (高智晟), a prominent attorney who has represented several Falun Gong defendants in the past.
Sklar complained that the US had not pushed China sufficiently to get Beijing to improve human rights conditions. Noting Washington's reliance on Beijing for support on such issues as Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and North Korea, Sklar said that the US government "has taken a very negative position in terms of supporting the rights of those being persecuted" in China.
Meanwhile, the US State Department said the US was "disturbed" by the prison sentence imposed on Chen and the detention of his lawyers before his trial, which had prevented them from defending him.
A department official said the administration is "concerned" that Chen's arrest and Gao's detention "appear part of a larger pattern of official harassment of individuals working to advocate for the legal rights of their fellow citizens."
The official said that the US had raised Chen's case "on numerous times at senior levels both in Beijing and in Washington."
The US has called for Chen's release and the end to Beijing's harassment of Chen's family.
Chen was arrested after he tried to bring a class action lawsuit against the Chinese government in Shandong for carrying out a campaign of forced abortion and sterilization there to meet birth control quotas. He was convicted of blocking traffic and destroying property.
Zhao was sentenced for fraud. He was originally arrested for revealing state secrets in connection with a 2004 Times report that then president Jiang Zemin (
Taiwan is projected to lose a working-age population of about 6.67 million people in two waves of retirement in the coming years, as the nation confronts accelerating demographic decline and a shortage of younger workers to take their place, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan experienced its largest baby boom between 1958 and 1966, when the population grew by 3.78 million, followed by a second surge of 2.89 million between 1976 and 1982, ministry data showed. In 2023, the first of those baby boom generations — those born in the late 1950s and early 1960s — began to enter retirement, triggering
One of two tropical depressions that formed off Taiwan yesterday morning could turn into a moderate typhoon by the weekend, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Tropical Depression No. 21 formed at 8am about 1,850km off the southeast coast, CWA forecaster Lee Meng-hsuan (李孟軒) said. The weather system is expected to move northwest as it builds momentum, possibly intensifying this weekend into a typhoon, which would be called Mitag, Lee said. The radius of the storm is expected to reach almost 200km, she said. It is forecast to approach the southeast of Taiwan on Monday next week and pass through the Bashi Channel
NO CHANGE: The TRA makes clear that the US does not consider the status of Taiwan to have been determined by WWII-era documents, a former AIT deputy director said The American Institute in Taiwan’s (AIT) comments that World War-II era documents do not determine Taiwan’s political status accurately conveyed the US’ stance, the US Department of State said. An AIT spokesperson on Saturday said that a Chinese official mischaracterized World War II-era documents as stating that Taiwan was ceded to the China. The remarks from the US’ de facto embassy in Taiwan drew criticism from the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation, whose director said the comments put Taiwan in danger. The Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday reported that a US State Department spokesperson confirmed the AIT’s position. They added that the US would continue to
The number of Chinese spouses applying for dependent residency as well as long-term residency in Taiwan has decreased, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday, adding that the reduction of Chinese spouses staying or living in Taiwan is only one facet reflecting the general decrease in the number of people willing to get married in Taiwan. The number of Chinese spouses applying for dependent residency last year was 7,123, down by 2,931, or 29.15 percent, from the previous year. The same census showed that the number of Chinese spouses applying for long-term residency and receiving approval last year stood at 2,973, down 1,520,
RSS