Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Puma Shen (沈伯洋) yesterday departed for the Netherlands despite threats against him by Beijing.
China’s Chongqing Municipal Public Security Bureau late last month listed Shen as “wanted” and launched an investigation into his alleged “secession-related” criminal activities in Taiwan, including his founding of Kuma Academy, a civil defense organization that tries to prepare Taiwanese on what to do in the event of an invasion by China.
The probe is being carried out under China’s Criminal Law and the judicial guidelines introduced last year on penalizing “Taiwan independence separatists.”
Photo: Taipei Times
A Chinese legal expert said on the state-run China Central Television that Shen should be pursued through Interpol and other mutual judicial assistance agreements with foreign countries.
The legislative Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee on Wednesday passed a DPP motion condemning the probe into Shen, saying that the Chinese Communist Party “has no jurisdiction” over the people of Taiwan.
The 209th Executive Committee Meeting of Liberal International (LI) started yesterday and ends tomorrow in The Hague, Netherlands.
According to the official agenda, Shen is scheduled today to attend a panel discussion titled “Defending Democracy in an Era of Political Manipulation,” organized by LI’s Human Rights Committee.
The session is scheduled to be chaired by Canadian political operative and LI Human Rights Committee vice chair Claudia McCoy.
Shen is to appear alongside Pavle Grbovic, leader of Serbia’s Movement of Free Citizens, and Bart Groothuis, a European Parliament member from the Netherlands, to jointly explore how to respond to information warfare and infiltration by authoritarian forces.
Shen and DPP Legislator Fan Yun (范雲) are also scheduled to attend a joint conference titled “Indo-Pacific and European Security: Developments, Issues, and Challenges,” co-organized by the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, and the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats tomorrow afternoon.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
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A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
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