China’s emergence as a new economic power may be threatening human rights and freedom in other countries, speakers at the International Human Rights Forum in Taipei said yesterday.
“Twenty years ago, the world condemned the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] regime for its crackdown on the Tiananmen Square demonstrations,” said former presidential adviser Ruan Ming (阮銘), a one-time CCP official who was forced into exile in the late 1980s for promoting political reform.
“Now things are a little different, with Beijing and Wall Street working to bring a new economic order to the world: China makes the merchandise and Wall Street invests,” Ruan told the forum, hosted by the Memorial Foundation of 228.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
Ruan said US economists were increasingly interested in the profits to be made by investing in China, while overlooking human rights abuses there.
“In fact, in addition to exporting goods, the CCP is also exporting ideas against human rights, freedom and democracy,” he said, citing as examples China’s support of the authoritarian regimes in North Korea, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Iran and Cuba.
“This crisis of democracy is not just a crisis for Taiwan, but for the entire world,” he said.
Exiled Chinese democracy activist Wang Dan (王丹) said “the CCP is trying to tell the world that the economy is more important than remembering Tiananmen Square.”
“It’s the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square [Massacre], yet no one seems to care much,” he said. “This is especially apparent in Taiwan.”
He called on Taiwanese to support Chinese democracy activists in countering the CCP regime.
For many, “human rights” and “freedom” are abstract concepts, World Uyghur Congress president Rabiye Kadeer said.
They think they will never have to face political persecution as long as they do not participate in political activities, but an authoritarian government can affect all aspects of life and even destroy an entire people, she said.
“Over the past 60 years since China occupied East Turkestan [also known as Xinjiang], its violation of the Uighurs’ civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights has never stopped,” Rabiye said in a statement.
She was unable to attend yesterday’s forum because it conflicted with a World Uyghur Congress meeting in Washington.
“While Chinese immigrants continue to pour into East Turkestan, the Uighurs are faced with the crisis of becoming a minority in our own land and [watching our] culture die out,” the statement said.
“Uighurs are arrested for no reason, religious practices are banned. We face discrimination in terms of economic activities and education and we’re even discouraged from using our language,” it said.
Political commentator Paul Lin (林保華), another panelist at the forum, said that in 1954, Uighurs accounted for 75 percent of the population in Xinjiang, but today are believed to make up less than 50 percent of the population.
Lin said that studies in Japan indicated that China’s nuclear tests in Xinjiang had killed more than 190,000 Uighurs, while affecting the health of another 1.3 million locals and 270,000 Japanese tourists who have visited the region.
“China often accuses the Uighurs of being terrorists, but I wonder who the real terrorists are,” Lin said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,