Ruan appeals for asylum law to protect dissidents

National Policy Adviser to the President Ruan Ming (阮銘) called on the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to begin drafting a political asylum law aimed at Chinese dissidents, in a report to be made public at a seminar over the weekend, the DPP said in a press release published yesterday.

Ruan said in the report that Taiwan has the responsibility of protecting and helping dissidents in China and telling the rest of the world about Beijing's abuses of human rights, as Taiwan is the emerging democracy that lies closest to China.

Ruan Ming is himself a dissident, and was the former special assistant to late Chinese Communist Party General-Secretary Hu Yaobang (胡耀邦).

Political message

To make its grave concern about the human rights situation in China clear to the international community, the DPP should draft a political asylum law as soon as possible, Ruan said in the report, which will be released at a seminar on Saturday in Taipei to monitor China's human rights prior to the 17th anniversary of the June 4 Tiananmen Massacre in Beijing.

According to DPP China Affairs Department head Lai I-chung (賴怡忠), the party fully understands the importance of such a law to people suppressed by a totalitarian regime, because the people of Taiwan had such an experience and received care and assistance from human rights groups from around the world when pursuing freedom and democracy under the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).

Since the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square, freedom of speech in the media is still absent in China, while Taiwan cemented its democratization by accomplishing a power transfer in 2000, holding its first presidential election in 1996 and holding the first general election for the Legislative Yuan in 1992, Lai said.