Legislators across party lines yesterday called on China to release human rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong (江天勇), who has been missing since Monday last week after he visited a relative of an imprisoned human rights advocate in China’s Hunan Province.
Jiang went to Changsha to visit the wife of jailed lawyer Xie Yang (謝陽) on Nov. 21, but Jiang went missing after making a call to his wife informing her of his planned return to Beijing, reports said.
Jiang’s wife and parents have attempted to file police reports with Chinese authorities in Beijing, Changsha and Zhengzhou, but they were deliberately thwarted, the reports said.
Photo: CNA
Jiang was an attorney in human rights cases, including one involving Chinese human rights advocate Chen Guangcheng (陳光誠), an expropriate dispute between the local government and private petroleum companies in Shaanxi Province, and a case involving the rights of people with HIV/AIDS.
Jiang’s actions have provoked the ire of Chinese authorities, which removed his license to practice law in 2009, reports said.
He has continued to work on human rights issues, but has been detained, abducted and tortured by the police, causing him rib fractures which had not healed when he disappeared, according to reports.
Taiwanese lawmakers urged China to release Jiang, who is believed to be detained incommunicado.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lin Ching-yi (林靜儀) said Taiwan has been through the 228 Massacre and the ensuing White Terror era, making the nation keenly aware of the importance of human rights.
“‘Forced disappearance,’ a joking term now used by young people here, is actually a dark reality for people living in countries where human rights are violated,” Lin said, calling on China to release Jiang ahead of Human Rights Day on Saturday next week to show respect for human rights and freedom of expression.
Lawyers representing people who experienced political persecution during the Martial Law era were obstructed and harassed by the government and the law enforcement agencies, but they might be “forced to disappear” and deprived of their rights if they were in China, New Power Party Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐) said.
As Taiwan and China have engaged in closer interactions, making China a country that abides by the rule of law is advantageous to Taiwan, Lim said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Apollo Chen (陳學聖) said there are also people in the pan-blue camp who are concerned about human rights issues in China.
Taiwan as a democracy should not remain silent about human rights violation over fears of offending the Chinese government, Chen said, calling on Beijing not to fear dissidents as if they were monsters.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift