Straits Exchange Foundation Secretary-General Shi Hwei-yow (許惠祐) said yesterday that China is interrogating hundreds of Taiwanese businesspeople based in "sensitive areas," including places near Chinese military bases.
China's interrogation and detention of the businesspeople before it obtained proper evidence of the men's alleged crimes were detrimental to the men's human rights, Shi said.
Shi, however, declined to confirm whether China's large-scale crackdown on the suspect Taiwanese intelligence-gathering operations in China had started after President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) unveiled the locations of China's 496 missiles pointing at Taiwan.
Noting that Taiwan understands that China's justice system is different from Taiwan's, Shi nonetheless said that the government here hoped China could follow democratic countries' judicial procedures in trying the Taiwanese businesspeople.
The government yesterday asked China to allow a team of Taiwanese lawyers to go to China to represent Taiwanese businesspeople Beijing arrested on charges of espionage.
The Mainland Affairs Council and the foundation expressed serious concerns over what they called China's manipulation of judicial procedures in trying the Taiwanese businesspeople it alleges are "spies."
The foundation sent a letter to its Chinese counterpart the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait yesterday protesting against Beijing's arrangement of media interviews on Friday with eight Taiwanese businesspeople detained on charges of espionage.
Condemning such interviews as damaging to the detainees' human rights, Yen Wan-ching (
Some of the detainees vented their anger at Chen and his government for doing nothing to rescue them following their arrests and said they regretted collecting intelligence for Taiwan.
However, according to MAC Vice Chairman Chen Ming-tong (
Suspecting that the Taiwanese businesspeople's testimonies during their media interviews were scripted by China, Chen Ming-tong said Beijing's treatment of these men reminded him of China's inhuman trials of prisoners in the 19th century. He did not say what trials he was referring to.
The cross-strait foundation has asked for the its Chinese counterparts help to allow a team of Taiwanese lawyers to accompany the Taiwanese businesspeople's families to China to participate in the judicial inquiries.
The departure date for the team of lawyers remained undecided, said the foundation, which has formed a task force to handle cases of the so-called "Taiwanese spies."
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
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
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