Taiwan Association for Human Rights secretary-general Tsai Chi-hsun (蔡季勳) and Chinese democracy activists criticized President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) statement released yesterday to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
“Ma’s statement was too weak,” Tsai told the Taipei Times. “He mentioned remembering history, the 228 Incident and the White Terror but didn’t condemn human rights abuses in China today.”
Tsai jointly issued an open letter calling on the government and the public to pay more attention to human rights in China last week.
She said Beijing not only refuses to admit its mistakes in the bloody crackdown or conduct an official investigation into the incident, but also continues to deny free speech and assembly.
“In recent years, China has even started to arrest lawyers who stand in court to defend people’s legal rights,” she said.
Tsai therefore disagreed with Ma’s comment that China had made progress on human rights.
“Of course you could say that the human rights situation has improved if you compare the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] with the Qing Dynasty government 200 years ago,” she said.
On the other hand, exiled Chinese democracy activist Wang Min (汪岷) said that, based on his own observation, the human rights situation in China today is worse than 20 years ago.
“Twenty years ago, university students and professors could talk about politics and criticize the government in public,” Wang said. “Nowadays, the CCP has tightened its control over dissidents — it’s arresting and harassing democracy activists and people who want to say something about the Tiananmen Square Massacre.”
“In 1989, people were able to stage a demonstration in Tiananmen Square, but today, you can’t even stay in the square if there are 10 or 20 of you,” he said.
Wang said the CCP acts as if it is working to protect human rights but is actually tightening its control on dissidents.
“As a president, Ma should not weaken his criticism of the CCP government for economic interests,” he said.
Another Chinese democracy activist Cai Lujun (蔡陸軍), who lives in exile in Taiwan, said he was disappointed by Ma.
“I wonder with which eye did Ma see the CCP making any improvement in human rights? ... People are still being arrested just for writing articles criticizing the government,” Cai said. “I used to admire Ma a lot, so I was shocked last year when he said things that seemed to cover for the CCP, and this year, I am very disappointed and angry that he’s openly praising the CCP.”
Cai was jailed for three years for posting Internet articles criticizing the Chinese government.
He was also upset that Ma cited historical events in the US, Europe, South Korea and Southeast Asia to say that government crackdowns on dissidents were common.
“What are you [Ma] trying to prove by citing examples in other parts of the world? Are you trying to say that because other countries did something terrible, it’s okay for the CCP to do so?” Cai said.
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