A stinging condemnation of the Chinese government in a report released on Wednesday on Capitol Hill in Washington received less coverage than it deserved, as hours earlier Iran had launched missile attacks on Iraqi bases housing US forces in retaliation for a US drone strike that killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad.
The shortsightedness is understandable, given the escalating tensions between the US and Iran, but the report should be of crucial interest, especially to Taiwanese as they head to polling stations today.
The report details the dystopian reality facing all who do not embrace the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) vision of ethnic solidarity and “one China” uniting all Chinese people.
Much in the Congressional-Executive Commission on China’s annual human rights report is not new, given the media coverage outside China of the concentration camps in Xinjiang, and the crackdown on other religious minorities, labor and civil activists and the media, and the efforts to erode Hong Kong’s political autonomy and freedoms.
However, one key finding is crucial: The commission said it believed that Chinese authorities’ actions in Xinjiang might be considered crimes against humanity under international law.
Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court lists 11 acts that constitute crimes against humanity “when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population,” and Beijing’s actions against Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims in four areas could support a legal case that China has committed such crimes.
They are: The arbitrary detention of Uighur, Kazakh and other ethnic minorities in mass internment camps; the torture of detainees in those camps; the detention of people and suppression of religious and cultural traditions clearly targeted against specific groups; and the forced disappearances of hundreds of intellectuals.
The commission’s report called for tightening access to US capital markets for Chinese firms involved in Beijing’s crackdown in Xinjiang, restricting the purchases from US suppliers of surveillance and other equipment and technologies, and sanctions against businesses and officials involved in the mass internment and surveillance of Uighurs.
These restrictions are crucial, as Beijing is using facial recognition cameras and cellphone monitoring systems to turn the region, as the report says, into an “open-air prison.”
Today it is Xinjiang, but Xi and his CCP are unlikely to stop there, something that Hong Kongers understand well, which is why millions of them are willing to march on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. They do not want the territory to become the next open-air prison.
In a cover story, Time magazine’s Asia edition this week called Taiwan “the last free place in the Chinese-speaking world.”
Taiwanese voters today face a clear choice between those who say the nation has only one option, to engage with China, and those who believe that democracy and sovereignty are worth preserving: engage with a regime that commits crimes against humanity against its own people or say: “Hell no.”
Voters too young to remember the horrors of the White Terror era should not be fooled by people seeking to tar the Democratic Progressive Party with the same brush or paint the choice of engaging with China purely in terms of potential economic benefits.
If living with the CCP’s and Xi’s vision of a “Great China” were so wonderful, there would not be so many Chinese in concentration camps and prisons for wanting religious freedom and the rule of law promised them under the People’s Republic of China constitution.
Taiwan’s democracy gives Taiwanese something Hong Kongers and the rest of China can only dream of: the right to choose their own leaders. Use it well.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under