A Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) official yesterday said the Cabinet had finished drafting a new refugee law which would protect political refugees from China, Hong Kong and Macao seeking asylum in Taiwan.
MAC Vice Chairman You Ying-lung (游盈隆) made the remarks while attending a forum held by the Democratic Progressive Party's Department of Chinese Affairs to discuss cross-strait affairs.
In his speech, You said related departments under the Cabinet had finished draughting a refugee law which they had been working on since 2003.
Although Taiwan is not a founder of the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees established in 1951, Taiwan was concerned about issues regarding refugees and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says that "everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution," You said.
"Therefore, the government has been aiming to provide asylum to political refugees and dedicated itself to the protection of human rights," he said. "I believe it is very progressive legislation."
You said that refugees from China, Hong Kong and Macao would be included under the draft refugee law.
"Once the legislation is passed by the legislature, Chinese people will be among the subjects who directly benefit from this law because of Taiwan's geopolitical relations with China," he said, without elaborating.
The draft of an article read out by You said that refugees qualified to apply for asylum in Taiwan are defined as: foreigners, people who have no nationality, and people who belong to certain social groups or hold specific political opinions providing legitimate reasons that prove that they cannot be protected by their own countries or cannot return to their own countries because of fear of persecution.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS