Human rights campaigners yesterday called on the Chinese government to uphold the rights of lawyer Xu Zhihong (許志永), journalist Sophia Huang (黃雪琴) and other Chinese activists who are being held in prison.
Taiwanese democracy advocate Lee Ming-che (李明哲) told a news conference in Taipei that he hoped the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would “abide by the laws of the People’s Republic of China and not arbitrarily deprive political prisoners of family visitation rights and the right to hire lawyers on the grounds of national security.”
Lee was held in China for five years under similar conditions, after he entered Shenzhen via Hong Kong in March 2017. He was accused of “subverting state power.”
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
The news conference was organized by Amnesty International Taiwan, Taiwan Association for Human Rights, Taiwan Support China Human Rights Lawyers Network and the Judicial Reform Foundation, among others. The groups called on the CCP to allow rights activists in custody to hire lawyers, and to return home to visit their families during the Lunar New Year.
Lee said the charges of sedition brought against Xu, Huang, Chinese labor and women’s rights campaigner Li Qiaochu (李翹楚), civil rights activist Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜) and labor rights advocate Wang Jianbing (王建兵) were unfounded, as none of them had ever publicly advocated overthrowing the CCP, or expressed opposition to socialism.
Providing an example of how the CCP arbitrarily accuses rights campaigners of sedition, Lee recounted a meeting with a dissident at the time he was being held in China.
The man, named Chengyuan (程淵), was charged with sedition after he complained about China’s family planning fine, and proposed decoupling family planning from the household registration system.
“The CCP is afraid of the independent civil society that these people represent,” Lee said.
“It hopes that Chinese people can be like atoms that revolve around it, depending on it for food, clothing, housing, transportation, education and entertainment — for survival,” he said.
Lee compared the situation faced by Chinese activists to that experienced by Taiwanese during the White Terror era.
Their families often face harassment and loss of employment, and their children face discrimination in school, he said.
“The CCP even goes as far as to publicly declare these activists to be bad people who undermine social stability. It attempts to rally the public against them, to deter future activism,” he said.
Citing an example of inhumane conditions that political prisoners are subjected to while in detention, Amnesty International Taiwan secretary-general Chiu Ee-ling (邱伊翎) said that Xu, who is serving a four-year prison term, has been tortured while in prison.
Li, who is Xu’s wife, wrote on Twitter in 2020 that Xu was being tied to a metal chair for 10 hours each day.
Hong Kong Outlanders secretary-general Sky, who goes by one name, said he has had to live in exile in Taiwan since the introduction of Hong Kong’s National Security Law, and he is unable to return to home to spend the Lunar New Year with his family for fear of arrest.
Taiwan Tibetan Welfare Association chairman Tashi Tsering said 160,000 Tibetans have been living in exile since the CCP invaded Tibet 70 years ago, and “6 million Tibetans continue to live in suffering in Tibet” under CCP rule.
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
ON PAROLE: The 73-year-old suspect has a criminal record of rape committed when he was serving in the military, as well as robbery and theft, police said The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday approved the detention of a 73-year-old man for allegedly murdering three women. The suspect, surnamed Chang (張), was arrested on Wednesday evening in connection with the death of a 71-year-old woman surnamed Chao (趙). The Kaohsiung City Police Department yesterday also unveiled the identities of two other possible victims in the serial killing case, a 75-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃), the suspect’s sister-in-law, and a 75-year-old woman surnamed Chang (張), who is not related to the suspect. The case came to light when Chao disappeared after taking the suspect back to his residence on Sunday. Police, upon reviewing CCTV
TAIWAN ADVOCATES: The resolution, which called for the recognition of Taiwan as a country and normalized relations, was supported by 22 Republican representatives Two US representatives on Thursday reintroduced a resolution calling for the US to end its “one China” policy, resume formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan and negotiate a bilateral Taiwan-US free trade agreement. Republican US representatives Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania’s 10th District were backed by 22 Republican members of the US House of Representatives. The two congressmen first introduced the resolution together in 2021. The resolution called on US President Donald Trump to “abandon the antiquated ‘one China’ policy in favor of a policy that recognizes the objective reality that Taiwan is an independent country, not
The US-Japan joint statement released on Friday not mentioning the “one China” policy might be a sign that US President Donald Trump intends to decouple US-China relations from Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said. Following Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday, the US and Japan issued a joint statement where they reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Trump has not personally brought up the “one China” policy in more than a year, National Taiwan University Department of Political Science Associate Professor Chen Shih-min (陳世民)
RSS