EDITORIAL: Time to revisit asylum law

An AI-generated illustration accompanying an article published on Sunday last week by the overseas Chinese-language political journal Yibao Online Magazine (議報) depicts an official from the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Commission for Discipline Inspection interrogating a handcuffed detainee. On the wall behind the official several instruments of torture are displayed. A slogan on another wall reads: “The law is what the party says” (黨領導司法). On a table lies a document labeled “crime of illegal business operations” (非法經營罪), a catch-all offense used against businesspeople and intellectuals in China.

The article is titled “An unyielding free spirit: The confession of a Chinese political prisoner” (生生不息自由魂：一個中國政治欽犯的告白).” The nuance of the Chinese word choice for “prisoner” (qinfan, 欽犯) is lost in the English translation. Qinfan is an archaic word meaning a criminal subject to investigation by the Chinese emperor, a clear snipe at Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).

The article was written by former China Central Television (CCTV) talk show host Cheng Wanjun (程萬軍).

Cheng arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on a connecting flight from Thailand on Monday in transit to Beijing. He did not board the onward flight and asked for political asylum in Taiwan while he sought resettlement in a third country.

Cheng said he had been released last year after six years in prison in China on charges of illegal business operations and feared persecution if he returned to Beijing. Ultimately, the National Immigration Agency (NIA) returned him to Thailand, in accordance with the legal mechanisms in Taiwan.

The fact and the manner of his deportation has drawn controversy. Cheng said that he sustained injuries during the deportation process and expressed disappointment in Taiwan. The NIA said that Cheng had put up fierce resistance during boarding and “engaged in self-harm.”

On this page, Kaohsiung-based writer Clive Hazell and Hong Konger Regan Chong Sik Yu offer different perspectives on the NIA’s decision. Some commentators in Taiwan side with Cheng, others are less sympathetic, with the debate focusing on the human rights perspective or national security concerns. The breadth of the debate reflects the complexity of the issue.

Cheng appears to have been attempting to replicate the path of Chinese dissident Chen Siming (陳思明), who was repeatedly detained in China for commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Chen arrived in Taiwan on Sept. 22, 2023, after traveling through Thailand and Laos. Like Cheng, Chen had refused to board at Taoyuan airport, asking for assistance to resettle in a third country. He spent two weeks in the transit area, looked after by authorities, and was able to obtain political asylum in Canada, an outcome he credited to rights groups and the international attention his case received, as well as the governments of Taiwan and Canada, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Cheng told Radio Taiwan International on Wednesday that he is advancing an application for refuge in Canada through the Independent Chinese PEN Center.

The publication of Cheng’s “confessions” on Yibao would do little to ingratiate him with the authorities in Beijing, especially with the increasingly stringent legislation in China designed to quash dissent and detain anyone accused of expressing it. The “confessions” talk of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s (鄧小平) “reform and opening up” era as “the 1980s, the least disastrous decade of CCP rule,” and related Cheng’s own participation in the 1989 pro-democracy movement. He laments the rise of the “leader who led to the downfall of the country” (亡國之君), an obvious reference to Xi.

This is what led to his arrest in 2019 for “reckless talk” after his comments were recorded and reported to the authorities, Cheng said.

Had there been an appropriate framework for such cases in Taiwan, the authorities might have had time to look into his appeal in more detail.

Taiwan introduced a draft refugee law in 2005 and the issue was briefly revisited in 2016, but little progress has been made. As a previous Taipei Times editorial (“Moving forward on refugee law,” June 20, page 8) said, “for a nation that frequently emphasizes its commitment to democracy, freedom and human rights, the absence of such a framework is indefensible.”

Perhaps it is time now for the government to be proactive in addressing this glaring need.