The fate of Chinese dissident Hsu Bo (
"With regard to Hsu's case, Wei Jingsheng (魏京生) [chairman of the Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition (中國民主運動海外聯席會議)] has sought assistance from human-rights experts in Taiwan. So we began to show concern about the case. After all, it's human-rights related," lawyer Tsai Ming-hwa (蔡明華) said yesterday.
Hsu sought political asylum in Taiwan during a transit stop at the CKS International Airport on Jan. 27. He is in detention in Taoyuan while he awaits a decision on his request.
The democracy coalition, which Wei says has a couple of thousand members outside China, has identified Hsu as the head of its Seoul branch.
Xiang Lin (
"I'll meet him on Monday, and the National Security Council (NSC) requested Tsai accompany me during the meeting," Xiang said in a phone interview.
Despite claims by a Mainland Affairs Council official on Friday that the government had assigned the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to handle the case, sources said the NSC was in charge.
The case has become complicated now that the US and South Korea have declined to grant Hsu political asylum, an insider said.
"He threatened to kill himself if he gets deported," the insider added.
Tsai declined to say whether she would meet Hsu along with Xiang tomorrow.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Katharine Chang (
"Government agencies will seek a solution to the case out of respect for human rights. We've contacted and will continue talking to the UN High Commission for Refugee Affairs about the case," Chang said.
Xiang pressured Taiwan to live up to its promises on human rights.
"If Taiwan is really serious about human rights and vows to help China democratize, it should respect Hsu's will to stay in Taiwan," Xiang said.
"This matter, if mishandled, will affect relations between Taiwan's government and activists in the Chinese democracy movement," Xiang said.
Xiang said Hsu began to lead the inaugurated Seoul office of the coalition since March last year after having fled China four years earlier due to his publication of a book entitled Red Fascist (紅色法西斯), which contained vehement criticism over Beijing authorities.
Afraid to be deported back to China amid pressure on Seoul from Beijing due to his involvement in the organization, Hsu chose to seek asylum in Taiwan, Xiang said.
The case became more complicated by the fact that Taiwan has yet to enact an asylum law.
The US agreed to grant Chinese dissident Tang Yuanjun (唐元雋) political asylum in December after Tang reached Tatan islet off Kinmen. Tang reached the islet by swimming from a nearby Chinese fishing boat that he paid to help him defect last October.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching