By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) said yesterday that it was studying the feasibility of proposing a referendum on demanding that the government seek an agreement on personal safety protection with China.
The TSU sees the need for such an agreement after Beijing’s detention of Taiwanese Bruce Chung (鍾鼎邦) for 54 days and the failure of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration to have 24-hour notification of detentions of Taiwanese in China written into the text of a recently signed cross-strait investment protection agreement, TSU Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) told a press conference.
“The most serious problem between both sides of the [Taiwan] Strait is the giant gap in their human rights and judicial standards,” Huang said.
Chung, a Falun Gong practitioner, was arrested for supporting his faith on June 18 in China’s Jiangxi Province and detained for 54 days before his release on Saturday, Huang said, because there is no religious freedom in China and because the human rights of Taiwanese are not protected in China.
Huang said a referendum on the issue was the best course of action, adding that the party planned to convene a meeting with civic groups shortly to gather support.
A cross-strait agreement on personal safety protection would safeguard the personal safety of all Taiwanese, including Taiwanese businesspeople, in China, and it would be in line with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which both Taiwan and China had ratified, Huang said.