Day: January 30, 2023

An experienced immigration lawyer has hit out at Taiwanese officials over ongoing restrictions on Hong Kong migrants, which appear to run counter to its democratic government’s vocal opposition to China’s treatment of dissent in the city.

While it is theoretically possible for a Hong Konger to achieve residency in Taiwan within one year of arriving on a different visa, many with connections to mainland China – which has repeatedly threatened to invade Taiwan – or who have served in the city’s government find their cases dragging out far longer than that, lawyer Lee Rih-chun told Radio Free Asia.

“They just don’t want them to get residency within one year – the so-called reasons they give for this are just empty words,” said Lin, who has specialized in immigration cases for the past six years. 

“They shouldn’t let everyone apply, only to find out that it doesn’t take one year, but three or four, and they may not get it anyway,” he said. 

Taiwan formally amended its immigration rules in 2020 to allow those born in China to apply for residency alongside other residents of Hong Kong and Macau, as part of a package of policies offering an immigration route to those targeted for the peaceful expression of their political views under a draconian national security law.

But Lin said the immigration department doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo.

“They have made the rules public to the whole world,” he said. “Why then is the government … not obeying the law?”

‘Sneaking around’

Earlier this month, the immigration bureau published, then removed, new rules banning Hong Kongers in Taiwan from taking part in demonstrations or election campaigns, giving media interviews or “entering, sneaking around or taking photos or video at military and national defense properties.”

The Mainland Affairs Council later distanced itself from the rules, saying only that Hong Kongers only need to abide by existing Taiwanese law.

A Hong Konger who gave the nickname Sally said she was worried about upsetting the authorities and getting deported.

“After reading this document, I thought maybe it would be safer for me to go back to Hong Kong than to stay in Taiwan,” she told Radio Free Asia at the time.

Meanwhile, applicants for permanent residency with China ties or an official background are being required to undergo “supervision” periods after arriving, violating their legal right to a timely decision, Lin said.

They also face repeated and intrusive interviews on the justification for their migration plans, including how they will support elderly relatives they applied to bring with them as dependents, he said.

No mainlanders allowed

Taiwan’s immigration rules state that nobody found to endanger the island’s national interests, public security, public order, nor citizens of mainland China, will be given permanent residency in the island, which has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party nor formed part of the People’s Republic of China.

But Lin said officials seem to use repeated delaying tactics with applicants they’re not sure about, rather than giving them a definitive answer.

“There shouldn’t be delays of more than four months, whatever the arrangements,” he said, citing the island’s administration procedure laws. “There’s no provision in law for probation periods, only for refusing an application.”

An official who replied to a query from Radio Free Asia said all applications from Hong Kongers with links to China or its government, party or military must be jointly reviewed by several agencies, and rejected if there are fears for national security.

“Many Hong Kong residents have been approved to settle here already,” the official said. “If there are doubts, a decision will be reserved, but the person concerned may remain in Taiwan while the review process continues.”

An official with Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council denied that the “observation periods” being imposed on applicants were inhumane.

“This has nothing to do with disciplinary action,” the official said, citing some applications that had “violated the original intention” of the safe haven policy.

However, even successful applicants have encountered obstacles when applying to have elderly dependent relatives join them from Hong Kong.

Submit a ‘life plan’

A Hong Konger who gave only the nickname April said she already has residency and wants to bring her 85-year-old mother to live with her in Taiwan.

Her mother is now under a three-month mandatory “observation” period, and has been required to submit a written “life plan” to the immigration bureau.

“What has she got to plan for, at 80-something years old, I thought to myself,” April said. “She has already gotten health insurance … so she won’t be using up resources.”

Another applicant who gave only the nickname Anna said immigration authorities had started an investigation into her business and the investment visa that depends on it after she applied to bring her mother to Taiwan.

“My investment visa and ID card have already been approved, so they should proceed logically,” she said. “I don’t think I should have to go back over the details of my investment immigration process.”

According to publicly available documents, the authorities have rejected a total of 12 applications for dependents of residency-holders, and their subsequent appeals, since 2020.

“The reason for reserving decisions and undergoing observation is to verify that the reason for the application is genuine,” the Mainland Affairs Council said in a reply to Radio Free Asia. “The competent authority naturally needs to examine the needs, purpose and necessity of the applicant’s coming to Taiwan to rely on relatives. Attachments are irrelevant.”

“A lot of Hong Kong families are now separated [due to similar issues],” Anna’s husband said. “How long will we be separated for and when will we get a decision?”

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un recently published a 100-year “master plan” to create a rich and strong country, but citizens who were forced to study the document said it was a rehash of pledges to bolster the impoverished country’s military and nuclear capabilities that offered no ideas for tackling a chronic food shortage that has caused starvation deaths and widespread malnutrition.

Chinese police have found the body of a teenager who had been missing for more than three months hanging in a grain warehouse a few minutes’ walk from his school, one of a slew of young people reported missing around China in recent months.

Police in Jiangxi province’s Qianshan county found the body of Hu Xinyu – a 15-year-old student at Zhiyuan High School who was reported missing on Oct. 14 – after receiving a tip-off, according to a report in the Chinese Communist Party newspaper the People’s Daily.

Hu was one of more than 10 teenagers who have disappeared in recent months, sparking widespread speculation on social media that they had fallen victim to organ-trafficking crime gangs following a loosening of rules around organ transplants in September 2022. Thousands of volunteers have joined in the manhunt for the young people or for clues about their cases.

The China Daily report said that police found the body was wearing the same clothes as Hu Xinyu had on when he went missing, and that a DNA test confirmed it was his body.

While the body had no ID, phone or money on it, police did find a digital voice recorder disguised as a pen, which has been taken away for forensic analysis, the report said.

“Investigations are ongoing … and relevant information will be released to the public in a timely manner,” the report said.

An officer who answered the phone at the Shangrao municipal police department, which administers Qianshan county, declined to comment.

“You need to keep an eye on our official social media accounts,” the officer said. “We will publish updates when there are new developments.”

People are suspicious

Wu Shaoping, a lawyer who has been following Hu’s missing person case, said many people are highly suspicious that the police had refused to accept the missing person report, sparking widespread rumor-mongering and speculation over his fate on social media.

“If Hu Xinyu really did commit suicide as they are saying, then why, and how did he find this remote corner [to do it in],” Wu said. “And why didn’t they discover his body before now — I would have thought they would have deployed police dogs and other technological methods in a case of such nationwide importance.”

Official media have reported on missing high-schoolers across China, including the central city of Wuhan, the southern province of Guangdong, and the central province of Henan, in recent months.

Li Lianchun, mother of missing Wuhan 14-year-old Liu Aocheng, said her son went missing on Nov. 12, 2022, around one month after Hu, with no progress in the case so far.

“He just went out for a walk after taking out the trash, and walked along the alley next to the basketball court, out of sight of the surveillance cameras,” Li told Radio Free Asia in an interview on Nov. 20, 2022. “There are quite a lot of kids missing now, all around the same age as mine, which seems rather bizarre.”

Li said she and others think there is a possible connection with the loosening of rules around organ transplants in September 2022.

“It seems more kids are going missing since the rules were relaxed,” she said. 

Hu was last seen attending an evening study session at his school on Oct. 14, while a 17-year-old girl from Panyu, Guangdong province was reported missing on Oct. 22.

Just a few days later, an 18-year-old woman disappeared from the northeastern province of Jilin on Nov. 4, followed by a 15-year-old boy who was reported missing from Shantou, Guangdong province on Nov. 5.

A 15-year-old girl was already reported missing from Maoming city, also in Guangdong, according to media reports.

New law governing organ transplants

Lin Shengliang, who tracks bullying incidents in schools and universities, said he has also noticed a spike in missing teens since September.

“The Chinese Communist Party passed legislation governing organ transplants, making it easier to do, firstly,” Lin told RFA in a Nov. 21 interview.

“Huang Jiefu, the former vice minister for health, has stated on a number of different occasions that China will become the world’s biggest country for organ transplants [as a result of the new law],” he said.

Human trafficking and illegal organ harvesting have long been a problem in China.

Authorities in the eastern province of Anhui sentenced a doctor to two years’ imprisonment in 2021 for “illegally harvesting organs” from 11 people, while reports began to surface as early as 2017 of dozens of college students who went missing in the central city of Wuhan.

But former high school teacher Pan Lu said he had counted “dozens” of reports of missing high-schoolers since September.

He said he found it hard to believe that they could just disappear, given the nationwide “Skynet” surveillance and facial recognition systems available to the Chinese police.

“There is nowhere in mainland China that isn’t covered by surveillance cameras,” Pan said. “So yes, it’s pretty incredible that dozens of young people can mysteriously disappear.”

The day after Hu Xinyu’s body was found, his mother Li Lianying checked into a hotel under police surveillance and waited for news, according to cutting-edge news site Caixin.

She said Hu’s clothing appeared to have been put on back to front, with the zipper at the back, questioning whether Hu had hanged himself, or whether someone else had arranged his body in that manner.

“I want the truth, not fake answers,” the report quoted her as saying.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

Indonesia said Monday it would be “impossible” to resolve the crisis in Myanmar during Jakarta’s term as ASEAN chair and that it wouldn’t resort to “megaphone diplomacy” to force the Burmese junta to implement a regional roadmap to peace. 

The Indonesian government would urge Myanmar’s military rulers to take steps to allow the Southeast Asian bloc to facilitate a national dialogue to end violence that has followed the military coup, Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said in parliament. 

“We know the history of Myanmar, the complexities that Myanmar is facing, so it’s impossible to expect everything to be completed this year,” Retno told House members at a hearing on plans and priorities during Jakarta’s 2023 chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The second anniversary of the coup falls on Wednesday, two days before Retno hosts a retreat of foreign ministers from ASEAN states at the bloc’s headquarters in Jakarta on Feb. 3-4 – the first meeting on the bloc’s calendar under Indonesia’s leadership. The country is one of the founding members of the 55-year-old regional bloc, which operates on the core principle of consensus. 

Retno said ASEAN could facilitate an inclusive national dialogue, but that would require a situation conducive to one. And such a situation, she said, could only be created if the violence ended and if the community could get humanitarian assistance.  

“Each party needs space to move, think and act. For this reason, Indonesia will not use a diplomatic megaphone in conducting engagements, especially at the beginning of the leadership,” she added.

Indonesia will work in accordance with the ASEAN five-point consensus, which its members agreed to in April 2021 for putting Myanmar back on a path to peace, Retno said. She added that Indonesia was pushing for an inclusive approach to resolving the conflict in Myanmar through dialogue. 

Still, Indonesia would have a lot to contribute, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said on Sunday as he officially kicked off Indonesia’s ASEAN chairmanship.

“I believe that ASEAN is still important for the people, the region, and the world,” Jokowi said.

He noted that Indonesia took over as ASEAN chair amid a difficult global situation, with an economic, energy, and food crisis, due to the war in Ukraine.

“ASEAN will keep contributing to peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific. ASEAN will continue to maintain economic growth,” Jokowi said. 

Retno’s latest statements mark a departure from Indonesia’s earlier stance, in which Jakarta criticized the Burmese junta for not implementing the five-point consensus. 

The consensus called for an end to violence, the provision of humanitarian assistance, the appointment of an ASEAN special envoy, dialogue between all stakeholders and mediation by the envoy.

Myanmar’s military, which toppled an elected government on Feb. 1, 2021, reneged on the consensus that it had “agreed to” in April that year. The agreement was meant to be a roadmap to restore peace and democracy in Myanmar.

Since the coup, the Burmese junta has carried out a widespread campaign of torture, arbitrary arrests and attacks targeting civilians, the United Nations and human rights groups have said.

Close to 3,000 people have been killed and more than 17,000 have been arrested in the nearly two years since, according to the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

Many regional observers and analysts, as well as the previous foreign minister of Malaysia, had said it was time to junk the consensus and devise a new plan on a deadline that included enforcement mechanisms.

‘Soft diplomacy’

Meanwhile, Anis Hidayah, a commissioner at the Indonesian Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM), said that because the Myanmar issue was complex and sensitive, the government needed to tread carefully, especially given that Indonesia was not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention.

“We really have to use soft diplomacy on how to raise humanitarian issues in Myanmar, for example regarding the Rohingya,” Anis told RFA-affiliate BenarNews.

She was referring to the increase in Myanmar refugees fleeing to Indonesia – with soft diplomacy Jakarta might be able to persuade the Myanmar junta to reduce violence to prevent people from fleeing. 

However, many of the Rohingya arriving in Indonesia reportedly flee from Bangladesh’s squalid refugee camps as well.

Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said this month that arrivals of Rohingya refugees in Aceh had surged last year to 574 people. By comparison, between 2020 and 2022, officials recorded the arrival of 1,155 Rohingya refugees in Aceh. 

“However, I agree that our ASEAN chairmanship this year must raise human rights issues in general in the region,” Anis said.

One legislator, Sukamta, reminded Minister Retno during the hearing that if Indonesia failed to make headway on the Myanmar issue, it would affect ASEAN stability. 

“We have a big obstacle related to Myanmar … this is a challenge for ASEAN to become an engine of peace. Because it’s a challenge for ASEAN’s growth when Myanmar is no longer stable,” Sukamta said.

“As the junta gets more brutal, refugees run rampant. Now refugees have become a commodity for people smuggling, and Indonesia has become one of the smuggling routes. This is a big challenge for Indonesia’s chairmanship,” Sukamta said in the House.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service

The U.S. Congress’ Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission called on Vietnam on Jan. 20 to release prominent political prisoner Tran Huynh Duy Thuc, who has now served 13 years of a 16-year sentence.

Before he was detained, Thuc was a well-known blogger and businessman in Vietnam, working as the general director of One Connection Internet, a phone and internet company.  He was convicted in 2010 on charges including promoting anti-government propaganda and attempting to overthrow the government – charges he denies. 

Several of those convicted in the same case as him have been released before completing their sentences over the past few years.

“For far too long, Vietnam has gotten away with imprisoning peaceful, political activists like Tran Huynh Duy Thuc without facing the kind of international criticism that should be leveled against Hanoi for its systematic rights violations against the dissident movement.” Human Rights Watch’s Deputy Director for Asia Phil Robertson told RFA.

Vietnam holds the second highest number of political prisoners of any of the ASEAN member states, Robertson said. 

“Unless Hanoi stops such rights abusing persecution of its critics, it should face pressure under US trade preference programs and the human rights provisions of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement.

Tran Huynh Duy Tan, Thuc’s younger brother, said his brother’s sentence is not proportional to the sentencing guidelines in Vietnamese law. 

Vietnam’s Penal Code stipulates that a person charged with plans to “overthrow the people’s government,” would be given a one- to five-year prison sentence.  The law came into effect as part of amendments to the Penal Code in 2018. 

Tran Huynh Duy Thuc has submitted several petitions asking to be released based on the new clause. He has also held several hunger strikes, totaling nearly 100 days, to demand the Vietnamese government’s respect for the law.

Several international human rights organizations and major nations, including the U.S. and the EU, have appealed for Thuc’s release.

RFA contacted the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment on the commission’s statement but did not receive a reply. 

Several international human rights organizations and major nations, including the U.S. and the EU, have appealed for Thuc’s release.

“Our family was very happy and grateful for the support of the international community and, most recently, the U.S. Congress’ Human Rights Commission Tom Lantos,” Tan told RFA. “They have always accompanied [us] and taken practical actions to pressure the Vietnamese government and call for the release of Mr. Thuc.”

In May 2019, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, officially sponsored Thuc’s case and called on the Vietnamese government to free him. 

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Nawar Nemeh and Malcolm Foster.

Nearly 150 refugees escaping violence in Myanmar have been arrested by Indian police in the eastern border state of Manipur over the past several days, sources in the area told RFA, including at least 50 children or minors.

About 50 refugees were arrested in a Monday morning police raid on the villages of Vitok and Min Non, residents in the area said. Another 80 Myanmar refugees were arrested on Jan. 27 during an inspection by local Manipur authorities stemming from a seemingly unrelated dispute between two villages near the Burmese border. 

The 81 were arrested for lacking proper immigration papers, the India-based Hindustan Times reported. It was unclear what charges the others were detained on. 

“Since the rumor has spread here that the prime minister of Manipur has issued arrest warrants for any Myanmar refugees trying to take refuge here, they have to stay in hiding,” said a resident of the area who declined to be named for safety reasons. “This is a situation where we can’t even help each other.”

Since the Feb. 1, 2021, military coup in Myanmar, which has sparked fighting between junta troops and various rebel groups, more than 15,000 people have crossed the border into India, according to India for Myanmar, an organization that helps refugees in India.

Indian authorities have repeatedly targeted the refugees, the organization added, saying that this is the fifth time in two years police have sought to detain them.  Local police are continuing to search for refugees who may be hiding in border villages.

Salai Doh Khar, a spokesperson for the India for Myanmar organization that helps refugees coming to India, said he/she is worried that Indian police will deport the arrested refugees back to junta-ruled Myanmar. 

“Some Myanmar refugees here in Manipur were threatened that they would be arrested and sent back to Myanmar,” he said. “In this situation, political activists who were obviously considered criminal by the military junta have to hide here rather than return to Myanmar. But those who take refuge here temporarily to flee the fighting in Myanmar have returned.”

Among those arrested were nine minors and two individuals over 70. They are being held at the Imphal central jail in Manipur state, Chin Human Rights Organization Liaison Officer Salai Kyung Dok told RFA.

On the Myanmar side of the border, security is heightened amidst an anticipated official military visit, residents of Tamu township told RFA, adding that military helicopters are often seen flying in and out of the region.

Radio Free Asia contacted the Indian Embassy in Yangon regarding the arrests, but has not yet received a reply.

Translated by Kyaw Min Htun. Edited by Nawar Nemeh and Malcolm Foster.