The Cabinet yesterday amended regulations to protect foreign dissidents seeking refuge in Taiwan and to expand the scope of protection to include people from China, Hong Kong and Macau, Executive Yuan Spokesman Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) said yesterday.
The government only grants temporary visas to Chinese dissidents as Taiwan has no refugee law. Chinese dissidents have been allowed to remain in the country temporarily based on “humanitarian concerns.”
The Cabinet yesterday passed an amendment to the Act Governing the Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例) that would allow the government to grant long-term residency permits to Chinese at risk of political persecution back home.
The proposed amendment also suggests that Chinese political dissidents who enter the country illegally be exempted from legal responsibility and punishment.
The Cabinet yesterday also approved a draft refugee law.
A previous draft law proposed by the Democratic Progressive Party government in February 2008 was withdrawn by Premier Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) Cabinet in late October.
The Cabinet said it wanted to bring the proposal in line with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights.
But Su yesterday said the newly approved draft amendment was identical to the previous version except that regulations covering political dissidents from Hong Kong and Macau were removed and incorporated into the cross-strait act instead.
The draft stipulates that a foreigner or stateless person can seek sanctuary in Taiwan if his or her life is under threat at home because of war, large-scale natural disaster, or political persecution and he or she does not want to go back.
The bill and amendment, which will next proceed to the legislature, would allow persons meeting the above requirement to apply for refugee status, the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) said.
To deal with applications, the MOI will contact UN agencies for assistance in verifying the applicant’s claims and will grant or deny asylum within six months (with a possible extension of another six months), said an official who declined to be named.
“During the one-year application period, the applicant will be granted a permit to stay in Taiwan, along with free legal consultation and basic medical care and accommodations,” the official said.
If a high number of people apply for refugee status, the MOI could impose a quota and would consult with the UN, the official said.
Once refugee status is granted, the holder will be issued with a refugee ID that can be used to apply for permanent residency, travel documents and eventually naturalization, the official said.
At present, most people seeking asylum are from Tibet or are the descendants of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) troops that were stranded in Thailand while trying to follow the KMT to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese Civil War.
Last year, two Chinese democracy activists — Cai Lujun (蔡陸軍) and Wu Yalin (吳亞林) — also sought sanctuary in Taiwan.
Cai sneaked into the country last year and was held for six months at a Hsinchu detention center for illegal Chinese immigrants, while Wu sought political asylum after he arrived in Taiwan last year as a tourist. Both now have temporary residency.
The two men drew media attention last September when they scaled the wall of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) to ask for political asylum in the US.
So far the two have been allowed to remain in Taiwan based on humanitarian considerations.
The Mainland Affairs Council provides them with a monthly stipend of between NT$10,000 and NT$20,000 to help with their living expenses because they are not allowed to work in Taiwan.
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