Today, January 29th, is the 681stday since Taiwanese citizen Li Ming-che was detained in Chi-shan Prison in Hunan Province (China).
After Li Ching-yu's visit on December 18, 2018, the Chi-san Prison has banned her visit application for the upcoming three months since January 23, 2019, with the excuse of “her public expression seriously distorting the facts”. Before the Lunar New Year, on January 29th, the joint conference is held by Li Ching-yu, the Rescue Li Ming-che Team, and Legislator Yu Mei-nu in order to response such atrocity.
Chiu E-Ling, Secretary-General of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, asserts that the Chinese authorities’ once again inhumane manoeuvre on family visit ban is really shameful. The press conference held on December 24th2018 by Li Ming-che’s spouse and other NGOs not merely revealed the facts that the books sent by his family are all prohibited and the application for “Family Phone Card” is denied, but also confided the condition that Li Ming-che has been suffering for at least losing weight of 30 kilograms due to deficient warm clothes, frozen bank account, overtime work, malicious nutrition, and unreachable communication. It would be no chance that the prisoners or their families take the risk to jeopardize their situation by lying to the public. If the Chinese authorities claim that Li and the Rescue Team are lying, the authorities should welcome all the prison visits so that it would be obvious who the liar is, the Chinese authorities or the prisoners' families. Furthermore, at the Human Rights Council in this very March, the Chinese authorities are going to adapt the suggestions from the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) review conducted in last November. And hence, we should call the international communities for attention on the infringement of a Taiwanese human rights activist's free speech and habeas corpus with such inhumane mistreatment, and to condemn such atrocities.
Legislator Yu Mei-nu claims that the Chinese rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang, the last one on trial since the 709 crackdown, has been sentenced to four and half years in prison and five years of political rights deprivation with the excuse of “subversion of state power”. In the meanwhile, Li Ching-yu received the notification letter from Chi-san Prison of Hunan Province that her revelation on the press conference after her prison visit has been distorting the facts and interfering Li Ming-che’s re-education through labor; and therefore the authorities has banned her visit application for three months. Such misbehaviors of the Chinese authorities have restricted the speech freedom of the prisoner and even his family, which has violated the universal principle of conjugal visits and the United Nations’ “Standard Minimum Act s for the Treatment of Prisoners” (advised in the year 2015 and with the Chinese participation) and the China Prison Law (ratified in 2013), including the Rule 58 that Prisoners shall be allowed, under necessary supervision, to communicate with their family and friends at regular intervals. We must seriously condemn and call the Chinese authorities to restore Li Ching-yu's prison visit rights.
Amnesty International Taiwan's Acting Section Director Annie Huang states that the AI Taiwan has been continuously raising global emergency assistance in Li Ming-che’s case in the end of year of 2017 and 2018. The scenario of Li Ming-che not just raised the attention by Taiwan or China but the whole World. We urge the Chinese authorities to maintain his routine, necessary and unconditional familial contact and medical care before immediately releasing him without any condition. However, from yesterday's notification letter from Chi-san Prison that Li Ching-yu was banned for prison visit, we are shocked with such trampling on freedom speech: the Chinese authorities are once again proven for its disrespect against the international laws and the basic human rights. When the Chinese authorities reject the routine prison visits, it has infringed the international human rights criteria of imprisonment; and Li Ming-che's health condition is so worrisome that his suffering and torture could deteriorate without any family visit and any prison watch.
Luna Liu of Youth Synergy Taiwan Foundation expresses that at the time the public attention for Li Ming-che seems little however gradually growing. But please be aware! Behind us is the people who want to know how come Li Ming-che is behind bars and why is he mistreated ruthlessly under the Chinese authorities' claimed crimes? Even more, what can our Taiwanese government and our people do to help Li Ming-che? Taiwan is a democratic country. It will always be discussed and shared when the Chinese authorities manipulate and prosecute its people and foreigners in China with ruthless manoeuvres. Prohibitions on Line, Google, and even bromance and metrosexual, blurring men's earrings on screen, censoring Youtubers' contexts, banning imperial dramas e.g. Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palaceand Story of Yanxi Palace, only confide their insecure and anxious regime. This fear and suppression will in the end accelerate to its State crisis and our Taiwanese people should be serious and alert. At last, and the most serious and dangerous is what we learn from Li Ming-che: nothing but manipulation and prosecution with the excuse of re-education through labor. The so-called peace agreement does never mean for peace but disguise for violence and humiliation. The case of Li Ming-che only reveals the fact that the Chinese authorities can make up whatever they can to trample on human rights. Our Taiwanese people should not only be alert but also resist such rampage against Taiwan. We could all be Li Ming-che. Encounter with the shadows and threats of the Chinese authorities, our Taiwanese people shall unite with solidarity, not surrender with naivety.
Hung Chung-yen, Deputy CEO of Taiwan Forever Association asserts that if a prison visitor's speech could jeopardize such shattered Chinese prison function, it only means such distorted authorities and prison are merely castles in the sand that should be broken down at any moment. And concerning the Chinese authorities banned visits only due to their speeches, it is totally absurd. Even the Chinese authorities find the speech context against the facts, they should follow the regulations on speech context, not to restrict Li Ching-yu’s minimum rights on prison visit. And furthermore, we can discover that the Chinese authorities take all the manoeuvres to silence Li Ming-che and Li Ching-yu, because their speeches would reveal the ugly truth which the Chinese authorities are desperate to seal. And at last, Li Ming-che is innocent! Hope Li Ming-che will come home soon! Hope our people in Taiwan should be aware together! Because any of us could be the victim under the Chinese authorities' prosecution.
The Li Rescue Team has been raising a “#365 Letters for Li Ming-che” to support Li Ming-che and to put pressure on the Chinese authorities via writing open letters. By far it has been more than seventy letters sent. In the meanwhile, the Team has been calling for the online support “Reunite with Li Ming-che on the Lunar New Year's Eve” that on February 4thwe can jointly check-in ourselves on Facebook and then hashtag “#Reunite with Li Ming-che on the Lunar New Year's Eve”. Throughout cyberspace networking, we must remind our Taiwanese society that there is a Taiwanese citizen suffering behind bars only because of his speech on net.
March 19th2019 is the second anniversary since Li Ming-che was subjected to forced disappearance, detained. The Rescue Team will have a series of events to remind our Taiwanese society to be attentive.
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Statement from Li Ching-yu:
sleeping pills help me not by sleeping
alcohol also not
I am always being tired
I want to stop
but the Lord let me not
I will keep going
to the high ground and downwardly overlook
to the height I can reach to feel
I will go.
Liu Xia, HYSTERIC SPEECH II, 2003
Prosecution, torture, that none of tyranny in the history will confess.
The day before yesterday is the Holocaust Day. According to the statistics, there is still five percentage of the European population which denies the Shoah.
A dozen of days ago, there are still supporters of Chiang Kai-shek who slap in the face to the bloody fact that their Generalissimo is brutal and atrocious against the dissidents.
However, I am Invictus and shall move on with or without accompany. The path against uneven is never even.
I must move on.
Because Li Ming-che is not a criminal but a prisoner of conscience.
I speak to the public and call the world for attention. My political end only meets with the worldly care for whom only pays attention on political victims' family and only asserts with the universal value of freedom, but whom is also a suffering prisoner of conscience, my love and comrade, Li Ming-che. My political end is open and clear without any hidden secrets.
In a free place, there is no secret political ends; But in an authoritarian place, there is always false allegation of secret political ends. In Taiwan, even I ran for president, there would be no secret political ends.
Every moment when I manage to visit Li Ming-che, is under the surveillance of your State authorities, and my press conference after it reveals nothing but what I see and hear from Li Ming-che's condition. What I remember most, clearly, is what he desperately told me:
“Write down every word I speak, and speak for me, in Taiwan, at everywhere, to everyone. I have yet finished what I want to speak. If they mess up with me like this, I will mess up, too. I read books about histories thousands and hundred years ago, and it has nothing to do with their damned business! They asked me to sign 'agree' to reject. I signed only because I don't want bother to those whom only do their jobs. I know they can't make the call. You say it for me, at everywhere, I have yet finished what I want to say!”
Your State authority has stated that I distorted the fact and lied publicly seriously. So please release the video record of visit.
My husband is in your prison. What could possibly make me able dare to lie? If I lied, you can immediate reveal the facts.
Aren't human rights an “interference on criminals' re-education” in your State legal system? Regardless of the fact that Li Ming-che is not a criminal.
The universal human rights standard on imprisonment is based on the Article 10 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that “all persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.”
Since December 2008 when Liu Xiaobo was under criminal custody with the excuse of “subversion of state power”, the international assistance and concern has never been ceased; however, your State authorities in the beginning had been rejecting human rights organizations' visit and broadcasting propaganda videos in the excuse that Liu Xiaobo was under humane treatment. In the end, in June 2017, the international community find out that Liu Xiaobo has been suffering for liver cancer and died within a month. How come a liver cancer such a chronic disease had been hidden under your authority? The secret political ends of your authority is well-known.
Humanitarian visit is a given right for the prisoners and their families. If your authority does not welcome my prison visit, it must be open to the international human rights organizations and Mainland Affairs Council of the Republic of China which represent me. I do not accept any delegation from any Taishang, they are under someone else' roof, and this is making them difficult.
Thank you.
