A group of Hong Kong students in Taiwan yesterday condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Hong Kong Legislative Council (Legco), and called on governments worldwide to alert their citizens to the dangers of traveling to Hong Kong.
The students’ condemnation came after Sunday’s violence against protesters, including Hong Kong police shooting into crowds and a gang of white-clad men armed with metal rods and wooden poles attacking demonstrators at a Mass Transit Railway station in Yuen Long District in the New Territories.
The CCP and Legco have misread and mishandled the situation, the students, who are members of the “Hong Kong Outlanders,” said in a statement.
Photo: Wu Po-hsuan, Taipei Times
From the start of protests against a proposed extradition bill, both the party and the council have ignored the will of the people and demonstrated their “flat” understanding of democracy, freedom and rule of law, the students said.
“We call on the government to account for silently allowing pervasive acts of violence and the spread of terror; we call on the government to refrain from further fracturing Hong Kong and exposing it to further danger; and we hope that Hong Kong, our home, will permit us to defend it openly, without the need to fear the shadows,” they said.
The students condemned the indiscriminate attack by a white-shirted mob at the Yuen Long station, saying that such actions are a threat to public safety and have caused social panic, as well as violated Hong Kongers’ rights to personal safety.
“These acts are close to what China’s anti-terrorism law would deem as ‘terrorist activities,’” they said in the statement.
The Hong Kong government and the police have taken no action against these incidents and have instead attempted to define the beatings by the white-shirted mob as “private disputes resulting in injuries,” they said.
The group cited media reports of alleged communication between the mob — some of whom are suspected to be triad members — and Hong Kong police officers, suggesting that the government itself have been might behind the oppression.
The government should be condemned for adopting delay tactics that continue to rip apart Hong Kong society, while pro-Beijing lawmaker Junius Ho (何君堯) has openly praised the actions of the mob, the students said.
The police firing 36 warning shots into a crowd was the use of arms without a legal basis, they said, adding that the action should be considered premeditated manslaughter and that the police should be brought to task.
Meanwhile, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday said that any government allowing criminal organizations to attack unarmed citizens should feel the rage of their citizens and be held accountable.
“It was painful and shocking to see what happened in Hong Kong,” Su said. “We should cherish and preserve our hard-earned democracy in Taiwan and root for Hong Kong.”
Additional reporting by Shelley Shan
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