Taiwan has no asylum law and accepts no asylum applicants on this basis. This would be problematic enough were it not for the fact that government officials and bureaucrats traditionally used this absence to explain away their responsibility to human rights protection instead of doing something about it.
Until now.
The Cabinet has finally approved a bill that would allow foreigners or stateless people to apply for asylum under circumstances including persecution and war. It is unlikely that the bill will become law in its current form; the scope for applications seems rather large and the definition of persecution rather fuzzy, but one way or another it is a positive development.
This bill follows on from the government’s codifying of two UN covenants on civil and political rights and economic social and cultural rights, and as such is a welcome example of the government delivering something practical and apparently enforceable in regard to the protection of human rights of not just Taiwanese, but anyone else who may have contact with Taiwan and its legal processes.
Human rights and democracy: these concepts extend to all people. But even today in Taiwan, so often they remain self-congratulatory slogans, not instruments of change and social nourishment. So often legislators on both sides of politics mouth platitudes in the direction of these concepts while failing to act in the defense of the persecuted on their doorstep.
The irony is that Taiwan has historically been a shelter for huge numbers of economic and political refugees from China. Soon, it appears, this role of sanctuary can finally extend to people of all nations.
The active pursuit of a balanced and sensible asylum system would help to wash the dirt off the hands of the Republic of China for its support for some of the world’s most odious and repressive regimes in the second half of the 20th century — many of which gave rise to refugee populations themselves.
The World Anti-Communist League, founded by dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) soon after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) fled to Taiwan, was an organization of its era, to be sure, but it was no less repugnant for its sinister activities, criminal links and corrosive influence on some of the most miserable nations in the Third World, socialist or otherwise.
For some, it will be astonishing to learn that this organization still exists, admittedly emasculated and mellowed, as the World League for Freedom and Democracy, which has ongoing ties to the KMT and almost every arm of government, including moral support from President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and other senior government and KMT officials.
Watching how the league, with its support for the Contras in Nicaragua and even nastier activities and connections besides, is able to jump through hoops these days accounting for the pro-Beijing activities of the KMT makes for entertaining sport.
The problem is this: Amid alleged attempts last year to interfere with the membership of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, this government and the KMT continued to fete the World League for Freedom and Democracy and its ludicrous legacy. The league stands for principles that are incompatible with liberty and the kind of sensitivity and intelligence that promotes democracy and freedom.
As with so much new legislation, the devil is not just in the detail, but in the very motivations of those who change the detail in its passage to law. The fate of asylum seekers and stateless people in Taiwan may be a small issue for most lawmakers, but as an index of the government’s commitment to human rights amid painful revisionism on the KMT’s record of activities, it should prove most valuable.
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
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
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
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