A new alliance launched in Taipei on Tuesday last week has reportedly compiled a list of more than 11,000 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials it says should be barred from visiting Taiwan for the role they have played in human rights abuses in China.
The “No CCP Villain International Alliance” (www.noccpvillain.org), which comprises groups such as the Victims of Investment in China Association (VICA), the Taiwan Friends of Tibet and the Falun Gong Human Rights Lawyers Working Group, as well as human rights activists and individuals who were persecuted by Chinese authorities, has handed its list to Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃), who is expected to pass it on to the National Immigration Agency (NIA) and the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), the Epoch Times reported on Monday.
The legislature passed a resolution in early December barring known CCP human rights abusers entry into Taiwan. The resolution, co-introduced by Chen and adopted by parties on both sides of the aisle, requires government authorities — including the MAC and the NIA — to deny Chinese officials who are known to have been involved in human rights abuses entry into Taiwan.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Greater Kaohsiung and Chiayi, as well as Changhua, Hualien, Miaoli and Yunlin counties, have adopted similar, albeit separate, resolutions.
Despite the measures, later that month Beijing Deputy Mayor Ji Lin (吉林) was allowed to visit the country despite claims by rights organizations that he had played a key role in the repression of Falun Gong practitioners since 1998.
According to the Epoch Times, included among the 11,000-plus names are Liaoning Governor Chen Zhenggao (陳政高), who arrived in Taiwan for a visit on Tuesday, and Anhui Governor Wang Sanyun (王三運), who intends to visit in April. Both Chen Zhenggao and Wang have been accused by the Falun Gong of participating in or facilitating the persecution of its followers.
“The Alliance hopes the government will make public who it invites and its reviewing process on these people,” Taiwan Friends of Tibet chairwoman Chow Mei-li (周美里) told the paper. “The government should consider the list we have provided and refuse entry to those officials who violate human rights.”
Although the alliance is based in Taipei, Teresa Chu (朱婉琪), a spokesperson for the Falun Gong Human Rights Lawyers Working Group and an attorney, said its scope was global and “belongs to the Chinese people around the world and will exist till the day the CCP stops suppressing the human rights of people in China.”
In addition to the persecution of Chinese rights activists, Falun Gong practitioners and Tibetans, the alliance also takes into consideration abuse by the CCP against China-based Taiwanese businesspeople.
Addressing a conference on cross-strait relations on Tuesday, Tung Chen-yuan (童振源), director of National Chengchi University’s Prediction Market Center, said the individual safety of China-based Taiwanese businesspeople continued to deteriorate while cross-strait relations were ostensibly improving amid warming ties.
VICA president William Kao (高為邦), whose factory in China was looted by unidentified men in 1999, and who left China in 2001 after his requests for help from Chinese authorities were ignored, was quoted by the Epoch Times as saying that information from Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office showed that every year, 2,000 business investors from Taiwan were victimized in China, or more than 40,000 in the past two decades. Expropriation of property, jailing and court cases in violation of due process are among the crimes committed against Taiwanese in China, the paper said.
Kao said that as many cases likely went unreported, the total number probably amounted to 100,000, adding that in the past 20 years, not a single Chinese official had been punished for actions targetting Taiwanese businesspeople.
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