China has denied imprisoned Lee Ming-che (李明哲) contact with the outside world since the COVID-19 pandemic began, human rights groups said yesterday, urging the government to do more to assist the Taiwanese human rights advocate.
Lee is not allowed to send letters or make telephone calls from prison, Amnesty International Taiwan secretary-general Chiu Ee-ling (邱伊翎) said at a news conference outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei.
Lee was arrested in China’s Guangdong Province in March 2017 on charges of “subversion of state power,” and was sentenced to five years in prison eight months later.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
Although Lee has served four years of his five-year sentence, Chinese authorities have not yet sent his family a copy of the guilty verdict or told them the date of his release, Chiu said, adding that Chinese authorities had not answered the family’s requests to be allowed telephone calls.
Amnesty International demands that China respect Lee’s rights to communication and healthcare as a prisoner, he said.
Taiwan Association for Human Rights secretary-general Shih Yi-hsiang (施逸翔) said that the government should speak on Lee’s behalf at the APEC leaders’ summit in New Zealand in November.
National Human Rights Committee chairwoman Chen Chu (陳菊) should represent Taiwan at the summit and demand that APEC establish a mechanism for human rights dialogue that could address China’s human rights violations, Shih said.
New School for Democracy director of advocacy Kuo Li-hsuan (郭歷軒) said that Beijing jailed Lee to intimidate Taiwanese so that they would not advocate democracy and human rights in China.
China has intensified its internal crackdowns of every kind, including the mass internment of Uighurs in concentration camps in Xinjiang and the arrests of pro-democracy legislators in Hong Kong, Kuo said.
“Taiwan cannot feel safe or enjoy its way of life so long as freedom does not prevail in the country nearest to it,” he said. “We have a collective responsibility to care about human rights in China.”
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