A coalition of civil groups yesterday called for the immediate release of human rights advocate Lee Ming-che (李明哲) and urged the government to continue pressuring China on the issue, after an application by Lee’s wife, Lee Ching-yu (李凈瑜), to visit her husband was rejected by the Chinese government earlier this month.
“It has been exactly one year since Lee was sentenced to prison and we urge the Taiwanese government to continue taking measures to demand his release,” Taiwan Association for Human Rights secretary-general Chiu Ee-ling (邱伊翎) told a Taipei news conference jointly held by the association, Amnesty International, Covenants Watch and other groups.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) should use the Dec. 20 twin-city forum between Taipei and Shanghai as an opportunity to lodge a protest with Beijing over the way Chinese authorities arbitrarily transferred Lee to different prisons and denied visitation rights to his family members, she said.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
The groups have previously called on the Taiwanese delegation to the APEC summit to demand Lee’s release when meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) earlier this month, but the delegation did not mention anything about Lee throughout the summit, Chiu added.
Lee was on Nov. 28 last year sentenced to five years in prison for “subversion of state power” after holding online lectures on democracy and helping families of jailed dissidents in China.
He was arrested in March last year when entering China from Macau, and yesterday was the 619th day of his detention, Chiu said.
Authorities had allowed Lee’s family to visit him five times since March, but have stopped allowing visits since September, she said.
In October, the family received indirect information that Lee had been transferred to another prison, although no explanation was given, she said, adding: “There is absolutely no information about him at the moment and that raises concerns about his well-being.”
Chiu also mentioned a referendum that sought to change the national team’s name from “Chinese Taipei” to “Taiwan,” which was rejected on Saturday.
“Many foreign media outlets have interpreted the election results as an indication that Taiwan is leaning toward China, but we are here today to show that Taiwanese will defend their freedom of speech and human rights, that we will not approve of Beijing’s values and disregard for human rights,” she said.
Her view was echoed by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Yu Mei-nu (尤美女), who vowed to continue voicing support for Lee and calling for his release “until the day he is freed.”
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
RSS