Opinion | Beijing must come clean on arbitrary detention of Taiwanese or risk hurting its soft power ambitions

On March 19, 2017, Taiwanese human rights activist Lee Ming-che vanished after entering mainland China. Ten days later, after repeated calls from Taiwan concerning Lee’s whereabouts, the Chinese government admitted that Lee had been detained on suspicion of “endangering national security”.

Since then, three similar cases have been confirmed. Lee Meng-chu, a volunteer organiser in a small Taiwan township, disappeared in Shenzhen last August, allegedly after distributing photos of Chinese military vehicles near the Hong Kong border. Two Taiwanese scholars, Tsai Jin-shu and Shih Cheng-ping, disappeared in 2018 but their detentions were not confirmed until last year.

Taiwanese accused in China’s criminal justice system suffer, not only because the system is rife with serious violations of the most fundamental human rights, such as freedom from arbitrary detention and torture, access to independent counsel and the right to a fair trial, but also because Beijing’s cut-off of official cross-strait contacts renders detained Taiwanese totally isolated.

When Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen took office in 2016, President Xi Jinping unilaterally suspended implementation of some major cross-strait agreements concluded with Taiwan’s previous administration.

Xi’s suspension, designed to increase pressure on Tsai to recognise the 1992 consensus that there is one China, undermined the implementation of the 2009 agreement on mutual judicial assistance. Thus, the Chinese government failed to notify Taiwan of recent detentions or offer any assistance to facilitate family visits to the detainees, as required by the agreement.