A Chinese court will make its ruling in the trial of Taiwanese human rights advocate Lee Ming-che (李明哲) on Tuesday, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Deputy Ministry Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said last night.
The council has contacted Lee’s family after being notified by the Chinese lawyer appointed by the Chinese court for Lee’s defense and would make all efforts to assist Lee’s family in making the trip to attend the verdict hearing, Chiu said.
Lee, a staff member at Taipei’s Wenshan Community College and a volunteer at non-governmental organization Covenants Watch, went missing after entering China on March 19.
The Chinese government in May said that Lee had been arrested on charges of subverting state power and was being investigated on suspicion of undermining national security.
Chinese authorities on Sept. 11 released videos at a hearing at the Yueyang City Intermediate People’s Court in Hunan Province showing Lee pleading guilty to charges of “subversion of state power” and to intentionally disseminating information attacking the Chinese Communist Party.
Lee’s wife, Lee Ching-yu (李凈瑜), attended the hearing. Before leaving for China she had asked that Lee Ming-che’s supporters forgive him for anything he might be forced to say during the hearing that disappoints them.
Judicial Reform Foundation executive director of Kao Jung-chih (高榮志) said that the timing of the Sept. 11 hearing was deliberately set to stop Lee Ching-yu from traveling to Geneva on Sept. 10 and reporting on her husband’s case at a meeting of the UN working group on arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods