Former Chinese State Administration for Religious Affairs director Ye Xiaowen (葉小文) applied to enter Taiwan on the pretext of offering his condolences over the death of Buddhist master Hsing Yun (星雲法師). Ye’s application was rejected by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), a decision applauded by a group of lawyers representing the Falun Gong.
The government’s move to bar Ye from visiting Taiwan is “absolutely legitimate and reasonable,” as Ye has been involved in genocide and “crimes against humanity,” the group said in a statement.
Denying Ye entry is in accordance with the nation’s democratic policy of upholding human rights, the statement said.
The council’s decision prevented a situation that could have turned into an international legal and political incident.
On Jan. 19, 2005, the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong released a list of Chinese Communist Party officials and its network of enforcers: Ye was one of them.
The organization said that the US’ Anti-Atrocity Alien Deportation Act states that the names of these criminals are to be submitted to the customs and immigration offices of all countries.
Under international law, the crimes against humanity and religious persecution committed by Ye fall under the principle of universal jurisdiction. In other words, all democratic countries and their national courts should exercise the authority to investigate and prosecute Ye’s “crimes against humanity.”
Although Taiwan did not cite the principle of universal jurisdiction to scrutinize Ye’s case, prosecutors can and should investigate crimes against humanity and religious persecution, as required by the Convention on the Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (殘害人群治罪條例).
People involved in genocide, defined in Article 2 of the convention as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” are to be sentenced to death, life imprisonment or more than seven years in prison. Ye’s “crimes against humanity” are considered a capital felony. Hence, should he enter Taiwan, he would be arrested and prosecuted.
It is fortunate that the MAC discovered Ye’s intention to visit Taiwan and barred him from doing so. The council prevented the nation from a major dilemma of tracking down criminals while dealing with international political problems.
Huang Di-ying is an attorney.
Translated by Liu Yi-hung
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS