Falun Gong practitioners yesterday warned Taiwan against Beijing's "one country, two systems" policy.
Before the UK handed Hong Kong over to China in 1997, Beijing promised to maintain the legal and political institutions in Hong Kong for 50 years following the handover.
"Only 10 years after Hong Kong's return [to China], we're experiencing more and more repression from Beijing," said Chu Wan-chih (朱婉琪), a Human Rights Law Foundation lawyer who has been assisting arrested Falun Gong practitioners in Hong Kong.
Falun Gong is a spiritual practice introduced by Li Hongzhi (李洪志) in 1992. Falun Gong has been banned in China, and has been branded an "evil cult" by the Beijing government. Practitioners in China are often prosecuted and tortured.
Although Hong Kong enjoys special administrative status under China's "one country, two systems" policy, Falun Gong practitioners and supporters are now facing tighter control, and sometimes threats, from Beijing Chu said.
"Falun Gong practitioners in Hong Kong, whether locals or foreigners, are often closely watched and followed by Chinese officials," Chu, accompanied by Falun Gong practitioners and their sympathizers, said at a press conference in Taipei yesterday.
Chu then told the press conference that she had also been harassed.
"Once, when I was in Hong Kong, I got a phone call as I walked into my hotel room after dinner," she said. "The caller, speaking in Mandarin with a Chinese accent, kept telling me, `You should know who I am,' and `I've been watching you since you arrived at the airport.'"
Chu said she was disappointed with China's "one country, two systems" policy in Hong Kong, and warned "all Taiwanese people with any expectations of the system ? to look at Hong Kong as an example."
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