A group seeking the release of Taiwanese human rights advocate Lee Ming-che (李明哲), who has been detained in China for 57 days, yesterday flew to Washington to seek help from US officials and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
The group said Chinese authorities have yet to provide information about Lee’s condition or whereabouts, adding that Taiwan’s requests for information have gone unanswered.
The group said it is hoping that international involvement can help speed up the process, giving the example of the international community putting pressure on Taiwan during White Terror era.
Photo: Yao Chieh-hsiu, Taipei Times
China has released a statement through China’s Taiwan Affairs Office saying that Lee is under investigation for “threatening national security,” the group said.
“As anyone who believes in the value of human rights would know, sharing Taiwan’s experience with democracy, showing concern for China’s democratization and helping manage funds to help poor families do not constitute a threat to national security,” it added.
The only information about Lee came from Lee Chun-min (李俊敏) who said Lee Ming-che was arrested in Guangdong Province by officials eager to show they were enforcing a new law governing NGOs.
The group said it understands and forgives the government’s inability to take further action given the lack of communication between Taiwan and China.
It said it is not using public funds or government sponsorship for the trip to Washington.
“The situation is unclear and the road ahead is bumpy, but we are not giving up hope,” the group said, whose members, along with Lee Ming-che’s wife, Lee Ching-yu (李凈瑜), are to spend four to five days in the US.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching