The family of Bruce Chung (鍾鼎邦) pleaded with the government for the second time in 10 days to do something about his detention in China.
Chung, a 53-year-old Falun Gong practitioner, was arrested in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, on June 18 as he was about to return to Taiwan and accused of “sabotaging national and public security.”
“We do not want to wait for another minute or another second because his life is at stake,” Chung Ai (鍾愛), Chung Ting-pang’s daughter, told a press conference in Taipei organized by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩).
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
This was the second press conference the family has called after making the same appeal with Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers on June 22.
The family has had no contact with Chung Ting-pang since his arrest or been provided with any further details about the case since the first press conference in which they urged the government to help, Chung Ai said.
Hsu made three demands: the immediate return of Chung Ting-pang to Taiwan, the assistance of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) in hiring a lawyer to defend Chung Ting-pang, the arrangement of a family visit and a discussion on how to protect Taiwanese from harassment in China in upcoming cross-strait negotiations.
“We have to make sure that Taiwanese are legally protected before engaging in broader cross-strait exchanges,” the lawmaker said.
Chung Ting-pang’s wife, surname Lee (李), was in tears at the conference, saying the government was the only channel available to the family to seek the return of her husband.
Officials from the SEF, the Mainland Affairs Council and the Ministry of Justice attended the press conference, said they had been in contact with their Chinese counterpart since the arrest and were assured that Chung Ting-pang was safe.
Yu Shiu-duan (俞秀端), deputy director-general of the ministry’s department of International and Cross-Strait Legal Affairs, said officials in the Chinese Ministry of Public Safety had given assurances that Chung Ting-pang was safe and well, but provided no further details as to his arrest.
A report last Tuesday from China’s Xinhua news agency said that Chung Ting-pang had secretly collected documents and incited Chinese citizen’s to destroy broadcasting equipment — crimes which endangered national and public safety.
Chung Ting-pang’s background as a practitioner of Falun Gong, which is banned in China, was not mentioned at the press conference.
According to Chung Ai, her family has been struggling with whether to draw attention to Chung Ting-pang’s Falun Gong practice, which government officials suggested would only “complicate the case.”
In contrast, Falun Gong Human Rights Lawyers Working Group spokesperson attorney Teresa Chu (朱婉琪) advised Chung Ting-pang’s family that his Falun Gong background could be used to pressure Beijing.
Between 1998 and 2009, 13 Taiwanese Falun Gong practitioners have been detained, imprisoned or tortured in China, Chu said, though they had all been released.
CREDIT-GRABBER: China said its coast guard rescued the crew of a fishing vessel that caught fire, who were actually rescued by a nearby Taiwanese boat and the CGA Maritime search and rescue operations do not have borders, and China should not use a shipwreck to infringe upon Taiwanese sovereignty, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The coast guard made the statement in response to the China Coast Guard (CCG) saying it saved a Taiwanese fishing boat. The Chuan Yu No. 6 (全漁6號), a fishing vessel registered in Keelung, on Thursday caught fire and sank in waters northeast of Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). The vessel left Keelung’s Badouzih Fishing Harbor (八斗子漁港) at 3:35pm on Sunday last week, with seven people on board — a 62-year-old Taiwanese captain surnamed Chang (張) and six
RISKY BUSINESS: The ‘incentives’ include initiatives that get suspended for no reason, creating uncertainty and resulting in considerable losses for Taiwanese, the MAC said China’s “incentives” failed to sway sentiment in Taiwan, as willingness to work in China hit a record low of 1.6 percent, a Ministry of Labor survey showed. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) also reported that the number of Taiwanese workers in China has nearly halved from a peak of 430,000 in 2012 to an estimated 231,000 in 2024. That marked a new low in the proportion of Taiwanese going abroad to work. The ministry’s annual survey on “Labor Life and Employment Status” includes questions respondents’ willingness to seek employment overseas. Willingness to work in China has steadily declined from
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
RSS