Taiwanese human rights advocate Lee Ming-che (李明哲) would soon be released from prison, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) said yesterday.
Lee, who in November 2017 was sentenced to five years in prison for “subversion of state power,” would be released “shortly” when his sentence is completed, TAO spokesman Ma Xiaoguang (馬曉光) told a media briefing, adding that authorities would arrange for his return to Taiwan.
While not specifying when Lee would be released, Ma said that Lee’s health was “stable.”
Photo: CNA
Non-governmental organizations in Taiwan, including Amnesty International Taiwan, estimated that Lee would complete his jail term today, reasoning that the eight months he spent in detention before being officially sentenced should count toward his sentence.
Ma also said that Chishan Prison in Hunan Province, where Lee is being held, had suspended in-person visits by family members of prisoners since COVID-19 outbreaks in 2020.
Authorities had ensured Lee’s rights to communicate with people outside the prison according to the law, Ma said.
However, Amnesty International Taiwan — which has helped Lee’s wife, Lee Ching-yu (李凈瑜), to campaign for his release — said that his family had not received any notice from Chinese authorities about his pending release.
Last month, the group said that Lee Ming-che had for the past two years been barred from speaking to his wife on the telephone or writing to his family.
During the two-year period, Lee Ching-yu applied to visit her husband at the prison 16 times, to no avail, the group said, adding that the family members of other prisoners had visiting rights.
Lee Ming-che, a staff member of Wenshan Community College in Taipei, was arrested in March 2017 while visiting China’s Guangdong Province from Macau.
He was sentenced to five years in prison and an additional two years of disenfranchisement in November 2017 for “subversion of state power.”
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
RSS