With support from more than 1.3 million people around the world, human rights activists yesterday urged the Chinese government to fulfill its Olympic promise by stopping persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.
The Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China (CIPFG) launched a worldwide signature campaign in January to raise global awareness of China’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and to pressure Beijing to stop the repression.
The campaign ended on July 20, the ninth anniversary of the beginning of the persecution of Falun Gong members in 1999.
“After just six months, we’ve successfully collected signatures from more than 1.3 million people in 127 countries around the world. Although they come from different social classes and backgrounds, they all did something just,” said Theresa Chu (朱婉琪), a US-based human rights lawyer and a coordinator for CIPFG’s signature drive.
Taiwan contributed the highest number of signatures, with more than 640,000 people, Chu told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
“The situation has only become worse as China prepares for the Olympic Games in Beijing,” she said. “A large-scale ‘clean-up’ was launched last December.”
Figures released by Amnesty International and the coalition showed that 8,037 Falun Gong practitioners were arrested between December and last month, with the number of arrests hitting 1,799 cases in May and 1,819 in June, Chu said.
“The Chinese are proud of having the opportunity to host the Olympics — but as long as there are people who cry during the long, dark nights, China does not have anything to be proud of,” Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) told the news conference.
Tien has long been an active supporter of Falun Gong.
“We hereby call on China to fulfill its Olympic promise and stop its persecution of Falun Gong followers before the Games begin,” she said.
When China was granted the right to host the Olympics in 2001, it promised the International Olympic Committee it would improve its human rights record.
“China often tells other countries to keep their hands out of its domestic issues, but human rights are values without borders,” former Taiwan Association for Human Rights secretary-general Lee Sheng-hsiung (李勝雄) said.
“Article 1 of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that ‘all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,’” Lee said.
“As a permanent member of the UN [Security Council], the People’s Republic of China should strictly follow this principle,” Lee said.
Aside from the Falun Gong, the Chinese government should also stop repressing Protestant and Catholic churches, Tibetan Buddhists and Muslims in Xinjiang, he said.
“Instead of trying to control all religions in the country, the Chinese government should learn to respect each religion’s traditions,” Lee said.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS