Chinese dissident Wuer Kaixi is a man who is as good as his word.
On Monday last week, he flew to the Hong Kong International Airport to turn himself in to the authorities, hoping that the Hong Kong government could deliver him to Chinese authorities to end his 24-year exile.
By doing so, he could be punished for the crimes of “conspiracy to overthrow the government” and “agitating anti-revolution” during the 1989 democracy movement. As expected, Hong Kong sent him back to Taiwan on the same plane.
Wuer Kaixi, who married a Taiwanese woman and took up residence here, has repeatedly said that he intends to return to China to give himself up to the police.
In October, I invited him to give a speech, entitled “Gazing at Freedom” (凝視自由), at National Chung Hsing University where I teach.
In his speech, he talked about how his generation, which was longing for liberalism, reacted to the unprecedented changes that were taking place in China at the time, the carrot-and-stick approach of the Chinese Communist Party, the enthusiastic support from Beijing residents, the ruthless military crackdown and massacre and his years in exile.
When asked about his plans, he said without hesitation that he would try to return to China to turn himself in — on the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre next year or perhaps even earlier.
Hong Kong offered support and assistance to the student protesters during the 1989 democracy movement, and some Hong Kongers launched “Operation Yellowbird” (黃雀行動) following the massacre to secretly help Chinese dissidents flee China.
Furthermore, every year on June 4 Hong Kongers organize memorial events at Victoria Park to mark the 1989 massacre.
However, the territory, or rather its government, is becoming increasingly conservative.
When the Hong Kong government sent Wuer Kaixi back to Taiwan, I was reminded of my own experiences in the territory.
Invited by the Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute, I boarded the Peace Boat with my Taiwanese passport and departed from Yokohama in Japan for Hong Kong.
When the more than 700 passengers arrived, I was the only one who was detained by the customs officials.
My foreign friends then realized that Taiwanese need a Mainland Travel Permit for Taiwan Residents (台胞證) to enter Hong Kong and they kept asking me if I had another passport.
Since customs officers could not issue visas at the port, they delivered me to the airport and sent me back to Taiwan.
I could only laugh to myself and say that I would lose one day of shopping, but I was unable to answer my curious friends’ question about why the Hong Kong government did not treat travelers with Taiwanese passports fairly.
Wuer Kaixi is a pacifist, and he does not recognize the violent means adopted by the pro-Xinjiang independence forces.
As a student at Beijing Normal University, he stepped up to the student speaker podium at a significant moment in time and somehow became the leader of the student movement.
Now he wants to return to China to turn himself in to the authorities.
What reason can Beijing give for keeping this middle-aged Uighur from going home after 24 years in exile?
Chen Chien-fu is the coordinator of Monitoring Internet Video on Demand for Citizen’s Congress Watch.
Translated by Eddy Chang
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
On May 13, the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment to Article 6 of the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法) that would extend the life of nuclear reactors from 40 to 60 years, thereby providing a legal basis for the extension or reactivation of nuclear power plants. On May 20, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) legislators used their numerical advantage to pass the TPP caucus’ proposal for a public referendum that would determine whether the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant should resume operations, provided it is deemed safe by the authorities. The Central Election Commission (CEC) has
RSS