Updating at 16:43 with news that Huang Yan has been granted leave to remain in Taiwan for three months.
Huang Yan, 48, a Chinese human rights activist who was granted refugee status by the United Nations in 2016, has claimed political asylum in Taiwan and been granted leave to stay in the country for three months, The News Lens has learned.
Huang arrived at Taoyuan International Airport on China Airlines flight CI 762 from Jakarta, Indonesia, at around 9 p.m. yesterday, according to Bob Fu, president of U.S.-based NGO China Aid, which assists persecuted faith communities in China.
Fu told The News Lens by telephone that Huang had been allowed to enter Taiwan this afternoon, and had been sponsored by Taiwan Association for China Human Rights (台灣關懷中國人權協會) President Yang Sen-hong and his wife, the association's secretary general, Ling Yao Chiu (邱齡瑤), who picked her up from Taoyuan airport.
China Aid had submitted written appeals to the UNHCR and Taiwanese authorities to act in support of her case, urging them to refrain from deporting her back to China, where she is certain to face persecution.
Huang, who became involved in rights defense work after meeting prominent Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng in 2003, claimed UNHCR refugee status in 2016 on the basis of deteriorating health in police custody while being denied medical treatment.
She played a prominent role in advocating for Gao's release when he was detained in China in 2006, having acted as legal representative for members of the banned Falun Gong sect, and offered outspoken criticism of China's government on its human rights record.
Gao was later sentenced to three years in prison for the crime of subversion of state power, suspended for five years, but would spend the next 12 years in and out of arbitrary detention and house arrest.
After several bouts of arbitrary detention and house arrest, Huang was imprisoned in December 2015 for the crime of “obstructing official duties.” She was denied medical treatment throughout her incarceration, despite having developed ovarian cancer as a result of serial police beatings and consequent miscarriages during prior periods in detention.
A June 2016 submission by the NGO Chinese Human Rights Defenders to the UNHCR in support of Huang's refugee status application said that she was subjected to "numerous arbitrary detentions, house arrest, and disappearance. In retaliation for her activism, she suffered miscarriages on three occasions due to brutality by state agents."
Fu said that in November 2016, Huang was released from prison in order to undergo surgery in Guangzhou, but China's public security services intervened and stopped proceedings before she had received medical attention.
Working closely with legislators in Hong Kong, Fu said that advocates managed to get Huang to Hong Kong, from where she escaped China for Bangkok. "Chinese overseas agents kept harassing her, and the Thai authorities were not able to continue to keep her because of visa restrictions, and so she was traveling back and forth between Bangkok and Jakarta," Fu said, adding that she had bought a one-way ticket to China from Jakarta as that was the only way China Airlines staff would allow her to board the plane.
Huang's case throws into sharp relief the Taiwan government's tardy efforts in passing a national Refugee Law, which would offer clarity on how to proceed with cases like this.
Advocates have urged the government to push ahead with processing a draft Bill through second and third readings in Taiwan's parliament, the Legislative Yuan, after the first reading passed in 2016.
"The first reading of the Refugee Act passed [in 2016, but [President] Tsai’s government is very afraid of angering China and so has retreated without moving the bill forward," Fu said.
A refugee law is seen as necessary, alongside the signing of other humanitarian legislation such as the Convention against Torture and its Optional Protocol (CAT, OPCAT), the International Convention of the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (CMW) and the Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance (CED) for Taiwan to uphold its position as a beacon of democracy and freedom in Asia.
Taiwan ratified of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 2009.
Between 2004 and 2007, nine Chinese refugees, including several Falun Gong members, who arrived in Taiwan to claim asylum were allowed to stay on in the country but could only obtain short-term visas, as in Huang's case, and were denied access to health insurance and other rights available to citizens and foreign residents.
However, in 2014, under the administration of former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, the Cabinet-level body responsible for cross-Strait policy, announced that the refugees would be given special dispensation to receive long-term residency permits.
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Editor: Morley J Weston
