Two Chinese dissidents on Dec 4, 2004

MAC defends handling of two Chinese dissidents

ADEQUATE TREATMENT: The council said two Chinese asylum seekers were being properly housed and were not being treated like ordinary illegal Chinese immigrants
By Joy Su  STAFF REPORTER
 

The Mainland Affairs Council defended its handling of two Chinese political refugees being held at a detention center in Ilan yesterday, saying the two men were not being detained and had been given appropriate housing while their asylum applications are pending.

Yan Peng  arrived here in June while Chen Rongli arrived in January and applied for political asylum.

Their plight hit the headlines again recently after the publication of a letter to the government signed by 70 well-known Chinese political dissidents, including Wang Dan, requesting that the pair be released.

But council Vice Chairman Chiu Tai-san said yesterday that the men are being treated well.

"They each have rooms that are 20 ping in size. This is completely different from the accommodations accorded illegal immigrants or criminals. They can read the newspapers if they want, and are free to see anyone they want," he said.

"The Mainland Affairs Council has provided them with telephone lines and Internet access ? in terms of living conditions, we've made sure they are very comfortable," Chiu said.

He said the government's treatment of Yan and Chen was in accordance with international norms.

"Drawing on international practice and the 1951 [international] convention on refugees, the government can restrict the movement of those illegally arriving in the country. Due to security considerations, there is nothing inappropriate about temporarily accommodating Yan and Chen in Ilan," Chiu said.

The council also called for patience, saying arrangements to secure political asylum are often a matter of timing.

"They wrote a letter to the president of France seeking asylum, but France is trying to strengthen ties with China right now. How could they possibly take in these refugees at this time?" Chiu said.

Wang Dan told the Taipei Times yesterday that the dissidents who signed the letter to the government were simply trying to speed up the handling of the men's cases.

"We didn't mean the letter to be a criticism of the government, but we hope that the handling of this case can be expedited," he said. "Right now, everyone is busy with the [legislative] elections, so it seems that no attention is being paid to these human rights issues."

"Living accommodations are a consideration, but freedom is more important. Even if they were detained in five-star hotels it would not be enough," Wang said.

Taiwan Association for Human Rights representative Chang Fei-lan (張斐嵐) said yesterday that the situation was difficult to resolve given cross-strait tension, but not impossible.

"The release of these two people will not lead to a security problem. It's not going to cause any changes in cross-strait relations," Chang said.

"It's pretty unreasonable to detain them on the basis of their Chinese nationality. This is a form of discrimination," Chang said.

Chang said that in addition to arranging for a third country to grant Yan and Chen asylum, the government could consider letting them live here.

Yan was involved in the democracy movement in China. In 2001 he was sentenced to 18 months in prison for his activities.

Chinese authorities arrested Chen for trying to establish a political party and continued to harass him after his release from jail last year.

"They each have rooms that are 20 ping in size. This is completely different from the accommodations accorded illegal immigrants or criminals. They can read the newspapers if they want, and are free to see anyone they want."

China's new repression means more donkey poo

By Nicholas Kristof

For the last century, the title of "most important place in the world" has belonged to the US, but that role seems likely to shift in this century to China.

So what are China's new leaders, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao , really like?

When Hu and Wen rose to the helm of the Communist Party two years ago, many Chinese hoped they would bring a new openness to a nation that is dynamic economically, but stagnant intellectually. Instead, China has become more repressive.

The repression has now engulfed a member of The New York Times' family. Zhao Yan, a researcher for the Beijing bureau of The Times, has been detained by the authorities since September and is not allowed to communicate with his family or lawyers.

Zhao is accused of leaking state secrets, a very serious charge that could lead to a decade in prison. China's government may believe that he was behind the September scoop by The Times' Beijing bureau chief, Joseph Kahn, that China's former president Jiang Zemin was about to retire from his last formal position.

While the Times' policy is, wisely, never to comment on the sources of articles, my own private digging indicates that Zhao was not the source for that scoop. He is innocent of everything except being a fine journalist who, before joining the Times, wrote important articles in the Chinese press about corruption.

Zhao's case is depressingly similar to that of another Chinese journalist, Jiang Weiping . He is serving a six-year sentence for "revealing state secrets," even though his real crime was exposing corruption.

"China has changed so much economically, but not politically," Jiang Weiping's wife, Li Yanling , told me. "It's a puzzle to me."

The authorities ordered Li to keep quiet about her husband's arrest, and detained her when she didn't. The couple's daughter, now 15, was traumatized at losing first her father and then her mother to the Chinese prison system. When Li was finally released, the daughter called her constantly from school to make sure that she had not been arrested again.

Zhao's arrest is just the latest in a broad crackdown in China. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 42 journalists are now in prison in China, more than in any other country.

"There was a period of openness, a period of hope, when the new leaders first came to power," said Jiao Guobiao, a journalism professor at Pekjing University. "But now they've consolidated power, and everything has closed up again."

Jiao should know. He wrote an essay this year denouncing censorship, and it was immediately censored. Now the government has banned Jiao from teaching.

I've felt this cooling as well. I was planning to visit China this month, but the government has declined to give me a visa. It's the first time I've been refused, and the State Security Ministry may have worried that I would write a column about its unjust imprisonment of Zhao.

I love China, and I share its officials' distaste for those who harm it. That's why I'm angry that hard-liners in Beijing are presenting China to the world as repressive, fragile, tyrannical and backward. They are also undermining China's long-term prospects by gagging its people.

China now dazzles visitors with luxury skyscrapers, five-star hotels and modern freeways. This boom is real and spectacular, but for China to be an advanced nation it needs not only spaceships, but also freedom.

Otherwise, all that dazzle is just a mirage. The Chinese leaders might recall an old peasant expression, Lu fen dan'r, biaomian'r guang. It means, "On the outside, even donkey droppings gleam."