Hopes rose that three dissidents feared abducted by China and Vietnam could be found with the scheduled arrival of the UN top human rights chief Mary Robinson yesterday.
Robinson, on her last tour of China, Cambodia and East Timor, was expected to hold talks with Cambodian officials over a Vietnamese monk and a Falungong couple who went missing despite living in Phnom Penh under UNHCR protection.
"Robinson will have to tackle the dissidents but she will also be raising legal and judicial reform," one western diplomat said. "There's been too much interest in the dissidents for her to ignore."
Li Guojun and his wife Zhang Xinyi held UN refugee certificates classifying them as "persons of concern."
According to Amnesty International they were arrested by Cambodian police on Aug. 2 and probably sent back to China.
"There are unconfirmed reports that they are now in detention in the PRC," London-based Amnesty said yesterday ahead of Robinson's visit.
The human rights watchdog added it was "gravely concerned that the Cambodian authorities are failing to fulfil their obligations as a state to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention."
Amnesty urged Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen to launch a full-scale investigation into how members of China's banned Falungong spiritual group went missing despite their UN protection status.
Thich Tri Luc of the outlawed Vien Hoa Dao Unified Buddhist Church went missing from his Phnom Penh guesthouse on July 25. He held refugee status under the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Amnesty noted the monk's refugee status and feared he had been abducted and forcibly returned to Vietnam "where he is at risk of imprisonment and other serious human rights violations."
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai
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