Human rights activist Lee Ming-che’s (李明哲) name has been added to the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China’s (CECC) database of political prisoners, a first step toward US efforts to help win his release.
The commission informed Lee Ming-che’s wife, Lee Ching-yu (李凈瑜), of its decision via a formal letter, sources said yesterday.
The letter said Lee Ming-che could be put on another list of priority political prisoners that the US Congress might submit to US President Donald Trump ahead of a state visit to China, sources said.
Lee Ming-che, who was reported missing after traveling to Zhuhai in Guangdong Province from Macau on March 19, is identified by the database as a political prisoner detained by Chinese authorities.
On March 29, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office acknowledged that he had been detained by “relevant authorities” for “involvement in activities that threaten China’s national security.”
However, it was not until May 26 that the Chinese government announced that he was being held on suspicion of the “subversion of state power.”
Last month, Lee Ching-yu traveled to Washington so she could testify before the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee subcommittee hearing on “Disappeared, Jailed, and Tortured in China,” alongside three Chinese women whose husbands are detained Chinese human rights lawyers.
Taiwan Association for China Human Rights secretary-general Chiu Ling-yao (邱齡瑤) yesterday said that “Lee Ming-che’s being put down in a [CECC] record suggests a good possibility of him being included in a list of human rights cases to be presented during a US-China summit in China.”
The US government has cited the Taiwan Relations Act for its involvement in Lee’s case, and a US Department of State official said that any harassment or threats made against Lee Ching-yu, or the others who testified at the congressional hearing about the imprisonment of Lee Ming-che and Chinese human rights lawyers would be considered “a violation of US sovereignty,” Chiu said.
“The US Congress has never made such a strong move in dealing with the detention of a Taiwanese,” Chiu said.
“Public and international attention is needed when rescuing political prisoners, and the scariest thing [for prisoners] is that no one cares about them,” she said, calling for renewed public attention on Lee Ming-che’s arrest.
The commission, created by the US-China Relations Act of 2000, is responsible for “monitoring the acts of China which reflect compliance with or violation of certain human rights,” and it annually reports to the US president and the Congress.
The commission is responsible for advising the president, members of Congress and senior US officials on human rights issues in China prior to diplomatic visits, in addition to compiling annual reports on rights issues in China.
In addition, the commission is responsible for compiling a list of political prisoners whose release US officials are to advocate at diplomatic talks with their Chinese counterparts.
Last year, Senator Marco Rubio, the commission’s chairman, and US Representative Christopher Smith, its co-chairman, sent a letter to the then-US president Barack Obama urging him to authorize the compilation of a list of Chinese political prisoners and raise human rights as a major topic of discussion when he met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
Lee Ming-che is the first non-Chinese citizen the commission has ever named as a Chinese political prisoner.
Additional reporting by Chen Wei-han
TAIWAN IS TAIWAN: US Representative Tom Tiffany said the amendment was not controversial, as ‘Taiwan is not — nor has it ever been — part of Communist China’ The US House of Representatives on Friday passed an amendment banning the US Department of Defense from creating, buying or displaying any map that shows Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The “Honest Maps” amendment was approved in a voice vote on Friday as part of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for the 2026 fiscal year. The amendment prohibits using any funds from the act to create, buy or display maps that show Taiwan, Kinmen, Matsu, Penghu, Wuciou (烏坵), Green Island (綠島) or Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) as part of the PRC. The act includes US$831.5 billion in
The paramount chief of a volcanic island in Vanuatu yesterday said that he was “very impressed” by a UN court’s declaration that countries must tackle climate change. Vanuatu spearheaded the legal case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which on Wednesday ruled that countries have a duty to protect against the threat of a warming planet. “I’m very impressed,” George Bumseng, the top chief of the Pacific archipelago’s island of Ambrym, told reporters in the capital, Port Vila. “We have been waiting for this decision for a long time because we have been victims of this climate change for
Taiwan is hosting the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) for the first time, welcoming more than 400 young linguists from 43 nations to National Taiwan University (NTU). Deputy Minister of Education Chu Chun-chang (朱俊彰) said at the opening ceremony yesterday that language passes down knowledge and culture, and influences the way humankind thinks and understands the world. Taiwan is a multicultural and multilingual nation, with Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, Hakka, 16 indigenous languages and Taiwan Sign Language all used, Chu said. In addition, Taiwan promotes multilingual education, emphasizes the cultural significance of languages and supports the international mother language movement, he said. Taiwan has long participated
Taiwan must invest in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to keep abreast of the next technological leap toward automation, Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) said at the luanch ceremony of Taiwan AI and Robots Alliance yesterday. The world is on the cusp of a new industrial revolution centered on AI and robotics, which would likely lead to a thorough transformation of human society, she told an event marking the establishment of a national AI and robotics alliance in Taipei. The arrival of the next industrial revolution could be a matter of years, she said. The pace of automation in the global economy can