China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) yesterday rejected a request from Lee Ching-yu (李凈瑜) that her husband, democracy advocate Lee Ming-che (李明哲), be given funeral leave to attend his father’s funeral in Taiwan.
Granting Lee Ming-che funeral leave “would contravene related laws,” office spokesperson Ma Xiaoguang (馬曉光) told a routine news conference in Beijing yesterday.
The prison has already provided the family with a detailed explanation regarding the matter, he said.
Photo: Chung Li-hua, Taipei Times
Lee, who in September 2017 was sentenced to a five-year term for subversion of state power, is now in Chishan Prison in Hunan Province.
Lee Ching-yu (李凈瑜) on Monday visited him at the prison, and also appealed to authorities to grant him leave.
As guarantee that he would return to complete his sentence, she offered to stay in prison in his stead.
“China’s response was just like what we had expected,” she said yesterday in a statement.
“By applying for a funeral leaving, I was treating Chinese authorities as if China were a civilized government, hoping that it would at some point conform to the standards of the civilized world, but such expectations were clearly my fantasy,” she said, adding that she hopes Taiwanese would remember this moment.
Although her husband wants to attend the funeral, he refused to let her stand-in for him at the prison, she said.
She was willing to be a hostage to the Chinese government because she wanted it to know that “Taiwanese are not afraid of going to prison,” she said.
Following the era of presidents Chiang Kai-Shek (蔣介石) and Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), Taiwanese know that freedom always comes at a cost, she said.
Meanwhile, a coalition of human rights groups including Amnesty International, the Taiwan Association for Human Rights and the Judicial Reform Foundation questioned the legal basis for the Chinese decision.
Chinese prisons have previously allowed inmates to take funeral leaves, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), they said in a joint statement.
“When the TAO said granting funeral leaves would be illegal, exactly which laws was it referring to?” the groups asked.
Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) on Tuesday said that the council would continue to provide assistance to Lee Ching-yu and expressed hopes that Chinese authorities would grant Lee Ming-che funeral leave for humanitarian reasons.
Additional reporting by Chung Li-hua
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
An inauguration ceremony was held yesterday for the Danjiang Bridge, the world’s longest single-mast asymmetric cable-stayed bridge, ahead of its official opening to traffic on Tuesday, marking a major milestone after nearly three decades of planning and construction. At the ceremony in New Taipei City attended by President William Lai (賴清德), Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) and New Taipei City Mayor Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜), the bridge was hailed as both an engineering landmark and a long-awaited regional transport link connecting Tamsui (淡水) and Bali (八里)
RSS