Taiwan: Legislative Yuan Passes Resolution Condemning Hong Kong Government’s Violent Deportations of Taiwanese Citizens
By a Falun Dafa practitioner in Taiwan
(Clearwisdom.net) On October 2, 2007, Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan officially passed a resolution jointly signed and proposed by 117 Legislative Members from different political parties, including Lo Chih-ming, Huang Chao-shun, Wang To-far and Shen Chih-hwei. The resolution condemned the Hong Kong government’s succumbing to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by violently deporting and denying entry to nearly 800 Taiwanese Falun Gong practitioners on July 1, 2007. The resolution requests the Hong Kong government to apologize and compensate for its actions. A letter has been written to request the relevant departments of the Executive Yuan to cooperate in handling the case.
The resolution was co-signed by 117 legislators from different political parties and non-party membership legislators. It is a rare occurrence that–during the process of proposing a resolution–legislators from different political parties, including the Democratic Progressive Party, Kuomintang, Taiwan Solidarity Union, and People First Party, all jointly proposed the resolution. Such cross-party support for condemning the Hong Kong government for encroaching upon Taiwanese citizens’ basic human rights is unprecedented.
The resolution said that the Legislative Yuan is concerned about the incident which occurred prior to July 1 this year when nearly 1,000 Taiwanese people holding valid travel documents went to Hong Kong, but were denied entry. The Hong Kong government denied their entry without providing appropriate reasons, and even forcibly detained and violently deported them. The personal freedom of hundreds of people, including freedom of belief, freedom of expression and freedom to travel, was seriously infringed upon.
The resolution emphasized that the Hong Kong government’s deportation of Taiwanese citizens caused large scale damage, is a basic human rights violation, and is a rare incident in the history of both Hong Kong and Taiwan. Moreover, the international media’s reporting on it caught the attention of the US government and European human rights organizations who also condemned the deportations.
Regarding the Hong Kong government’s rude actions, the Legislative Yuan requested the relevant government departments to represent the Taiwanese people in sternly condemning the Hong Kong government for bowing to the Chinese Communist Party’s behind-the-scenes manipulation in creating a large-scale, violent deportation incident. The Legislative Yuan requested an apology and compensation for the damage caused by the Hong Kong government, and an assurance that such actions that harm the friendship between the two countries will not occur again.
The resolution urged the relevant governmental departments to inform all people across Taiwan, through all communication channels, about the Hong Kong government’s unlawful and unjust actions. The resolution also requested the government to ask intelligence agencies and national security units to take effective precautionary measures against disseminating Taiwanese people’s personal information and making them potential targets of the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution. This is to safeguard people’s rights, and to correct misunderstandings.
