Two US lawmakers on Thursday nominated Jimmy Lai (黎智英), a former Hong Kong publisher now standing trial on national security charges, and three other jailed dissidents for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In a letter to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, US Representative Chris Smith and US Senator Jeffrey Merkley, cochairs of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, nominated Lai, along with Uighur academic Ilham Tohti, and rights advocates Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜) and Xu Zhiyong (許志永).
All four are jailed for their work.
Photo: AFP
“All these individuals embody the spirit of the Nobel Peace Prize and justly deserve the award,” Smith and Merkley wrote. “The Peace Prize will focus world attention on all those struggling to exercise their fundamental human rights in the People’s Republic of China.”
Last week, Chinese Ambassador to the UN Office at Geneva Chen Xu (陳旭) said during a UN-backed review of the country’s human rights record that China “upholds respect for and protection of human rights as a task of importance in state governance.”
“We have embarked on a path of human rights development that is in keeping with the trend of the times and appropriate to China’s national conditions and so-called historic achievements in this process,” Chen said.
During the review, Western governments and rights groups criticized Beijing’s rights records and urged the Chinese government to stop criminalizing peaceful expression.
They called for Lai’s release and the repeal of Hong Kong’s National Security Law, under which Lai is being prosecuted for calling for foreign sanctions on mainland Chinese and Hong Kong officials.
If convicted, Lai could be jailed for life.
Tohti is serving a life sentence for advocating for the rights of ethnic minority groups.
Beijing calls him a “separatist.”
Ding and Xu last year were sentenced to 12 and 14 years in jail respectively after being convicted of subverting state power.
The two men are best known for their advocacy for civil society and equal access to education for children of migrant workers.
In 2010, Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), then imprisoned, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his advocacy for political reforms and human rights.
Beijing called the award a political farce. It refused to release Liu, who in 2017 died of liver cancer in jail.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
RSS