National Tsing Hua University associate professor on sociology Chen Ming-chi, front row second left, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Fan Yun, front row center, New School for Democracy chairman Tseng Chien-yuan, front row second right, New Power Party Legislator Chen Jiau-hua, front row right, and others participate in an online forum organized yesterday by the New School for Democracy to discuss China’s expanding totalitarianism in Hong Kong.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times

Human rights advocates yesterday cautioned the global community against China’s expanding totalitarianism in Hong Kong and elsewhere, as they marked the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) on Thursday said that the government had received asylum applications from at least 200 Hong Kongers as Beijing seeks to ram through a national security bill for the territory.

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has said that there is no need to introduce refugee legislation to offer Hong Kongers asylum, while Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) has said the Act Governing Relations With Hong Kong and Macau (香港澳門關係條例) does not need to be amended to deal with such requests.

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in her inaugural address on May 20 firmly said: “We will not accept the Beijing authorities’ use of ‘one country, two systems’ to downgrade Taiwan and undermine the cross-strait status quo.”

The Chinese government was not too happy, and later that day, an opinion piece on the Web site of China’s state broadcaster China Central Television said: “While Tsai’s first inaugural address four years ago was read by Beijing as an ‘unfinished answer sheet,’ the one she presented this time was even more below-par.”