Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) and several other supporters of renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未) yesterday voiced their support for him, urging the public to help pressure Chinese authorities for his release.
“As Taiwan develops closer connections with China, we should stand firmly behind our values of justice and conscience, and voice our concerns when China commits human rights violations,” Tien told a news conference at the legislature yesterday. “If we don’t speak out, China will think that we agree with what they are doing.”
“Just like the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement that we’ve signed with China [in June last year], we should sign an agreement on freedom and democracy, as the basis for cross-strait interactions,” founding president of the Taiwan Association for China Human Rights, Yang Hsien-hung (楊憲宏) said. “If our neighbors are not free, we are not free.”
Ai is known for his role in designing the Beijing National Stadium — nicknamed the Bird’s Nest — used for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
However, since last year, he has been speaking out about artists and minority groups suffering state repression, and made remarks in support of Internet organized “Jasmine Rallies” that took place in several major Chinese cities starting in February.
Ai was detained earlier this month at Beijing Capital International Airport as he was passing through security to board a flight to Hong Kong. Chinese authorities said this week that he was arrested because of alleged involvement in “economic crimes.”
Taipei Contemporary Art Center chairman Manray Hsu (徐文瑞) also voiced his support for Ai, calling on China to “respect such basic human rights as freedoms of speech and thoughts.”
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:
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