The Chinese government’s sanctions on foreign officials have only emboldened more lawmakers from around the world to stop up in Taiwan, as their relations with the country cannot be decided through others, Dutch lawmaker Sjoerd Sjoerdsma said in Taipei.
Sjoerdsma is visiting Taiwan as part of an Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) delegation. The organization arrived Tuesday.
Sjoerdsma, an outspoken critic of China’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, was unable to enter China last March after the EU imposed sanctions on 4 Chinese officials for what she said had a role in the genocide of the Uighurs.
Photo courtesy of the presidential office.
“The EU punishes other people who commit human rights violations, but Beijing punishes other people who protect human rights, which is not only ironic, but also a very unhappy situation,” Sjoerdsma told a news conference.
The delegation to Taiwan sends a message to Beijing after the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) defeated last month, he said.
“The central message of our scale here is one of solidarity, to show right after the party congress in Beijing that Taiwan deserves not to be isolated, but contacts will only increase,” Sjoerdsma said. it will come [to Taiwan] more often, and our relationships and friendship deserve not to be taken into account through others. “
Sjoerdsma said he and many other Dutch lawmakers have long tried to engage in substantive discussion with China, not only on human rights issues, but also on issues of common concern, such as climate change.
However, whenever an invitation to Chinese ambassadors to communicate on those issues is prolonged, their first reaction is to ask lawmakers not to stop in Taiwan or not to communicate about human rights in China, Sjoerdsma said.
IPAC is a foreign multi-stakeholder organization of lawmakers from 29 countries running to reform their countries to China, according to its website.
Els Van Hoof, IPAC co-chair and member of Belgium’s House of Representatives, said the alliance is an “anti-China group,” but quite the opposite.
“We are in IPAC exactly because we are interested in China,” but China’s rise comes at the expense of global democracy and human rights, he said.
Specifically, the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait will be unilaterally replaced through the People’s Republic of China, Van Hoof said.
The 12-member delegation, led by IPAC co-chair and MEP Reinhard Butikofer, is due to conclude its meeting today.
Butikofer, who tested positive for COVID-19 after arriving and was hospitalized, received the Grand Medal of Diplomacy from Foreign Minister Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) in a virtual rite in popularity of his decades-long efforts to publicize Taiwan’s relations with Germany.
In a meeting with the delegation, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) urged democratic countries to work together to uphold their common values and highlighted the credit Taiwan’s semiconductor industry gives to help review global supply chains.
Taiwan aspires to work with democratic partners to build safer and more resilient global supply chains through investment cooperation and generation sharing, Tsai said.
Butikofer said at the rite that IPAC members are also willing to strengthen partnerships between their countries and Taiwan, especially in the realm of industry and investment, the presidential office said.
IPAC members sign a bilateral investment agreement between Taiwan and the EU, Butikofer said on behalf of the delegation, whose members are all European.
In a separate meeting, Heino Klinck, a former U. S. deputy assistant secretary of defense. The U. S. government for East Asia told Tsai that China had selected “systematic competition” with democratic nations and sought to rewrite the existing foreign order for its own benefit.
It’s vital that like-minded countries “join the deterrence in all spaces to make sure the festival doesn’t lead to conflict,” said Klinck, director of consulting firm Klinck Global LLC.
Tsai told Klinck and other experts from the think tank who attended the assembly that Taiwan will continue its self-defense functions while strengthening ties with democratic partners around the world.