Groups urge more help for HK political refugees
‘PURGE UNDER WAY’: An Academia Sinica researcher said that help is urgently needed, as freedoms and the rule of law are shrinking under the National Security Law
By Chen Yu-fu
and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer
The government must take in more political refugees from Hong Kong, human rights groups said in Taipei yesterday, after a Chinese court on Wednesday sentenced 10 would-be asylum seekers to prison.
“The Hong Kong government has achieved a capacity to purge and suppress dissent that the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] did not attain for a decade after its rise to power in 1949,” Wu Rwei-ren (吳叡人), an associate research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Taiwan History, told a news conference organized by the Covenants Watch, the New School for Democracy and other groups outside the Legislative Yuan.
Looking back at a difficult year By Global Times Published: Dec 30, 2020 11:08 PM
Editor s Note:
The novel coronavirus pandemic changed the way people lived and wreaked havoc on global economy.
For most people on the planet, 2020 might be the lowest and most difficult year since the start of the 21st century. A virus that had not been even named in 2019 has spread to one out of every 93 people in the world by the end of 2020, and at least 1.79 million people have died from it. The degree of global economic contraction and the intensity of fiscal expenditures in many countries were almost the same as those just after the end of a world war. Meanwhile, it was gratifying to hear some good news at the end of the year: China s Chang e-5 lunar exploration successfully returned, the UK reached the post-Brexit trade agreement at the last minute, and the COVID-19 vaccine was launched at a miraculous speed. Finally, we are going to say goodbye to 2020.
2020: The year Beijing brought down the shutters on democracy in Hong Kong
Issued on:
28/12/2020 - 10:41 Supporters show signs for Hong Kong pro-democracy activists Agnes Chow, Ivan Lam and Joshua Wong outside a court on December 2, 2020 after the three were given jail time. Their sentences are the result of a harsh National Security Law that Beijing imposed in Hong Kong after months of violent protests. Peter PARKS AFP/File 13 min 2020 will be remembered as the year that Beijing took back control of Hong Kong. Since the handover by the UK in 1997, the territory existed under the “one country, two systems” policy, guaranteeing a certain flexibility in political matters. But after months of massive anti-China demonstrations, Beijing finally stepped in, heavily.
“In the end, this is how you describe us: Banshee, shrew, whore, and hooker Fishwife, bitch, slutty man-eater. Look, this is how you belittle us”
These lyrics from Mandopop star Tan Weiwei (Sitar Tan) are powerful in their own right, but they take on a new urgency in a year when China saw several especially brutal cases of violence against women in the national spotlight. Soon before Tan’s song hit the internet, screenwriter and activist Xianzi appeared at a court in Beijing to hold a powerful CCTV host, Zhu Jun, accountable for sexual harassment. Hundreds of Xianzi’s fans gathered in the cold outside the courthouse in solidarity.
Cross-strait chasm seen in tycoon, media group
By Chen Kuan-Fu 陳冠甫
Two seismic events, one in Taiwan and the other in Hong Kong, have sent shock waves through the respective journalistic communities over the past month.
The event in Taiwan occurred at midnight on Dec. 11, when CTi News ceased broadcasting on cable television after its license renewal application was rejected by the National Communications Commission.
The following day, the channel’s owner, Want Want China Times Media Group founder Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), announced that CTi News would be transformed into a “new media” organization and continue broadcasting around-the-clock on YouTube.
At the time of writing, the YouTube channel had 2.27 million subscribers.