The sanctions imposed by the Chinese government have only encouraged more visits to Taiwan by parliamentarians across the world, as their friendship with Taiwan cannot be determined by others, a member of a visiting delegation from the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) said Thursday.
Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, a member of the Netherlands House of Representatives, made the remarks at a press conference in Taipei during the IPAC delegation’s visit, which started Tuesday.
An outspoken critic of China’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Sjoerdsma was banned in March 2021 from entering China, after the European Union imposed sanctions against four Chinese officials for what it said were their roles in perpetrating Uyghur genocide.
“The EU sanctions people who commit human right violations, but Beijing sanctions people who stand up for human rights, which is not only ironic but a very sad situation,” Sjoerdsma said at Thursday’s press conference.
He said the IPAC delegation’s visit to Taiwan sends a message to Beijing in the wake of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 20th National Congress late last month.
“The core message of our visit here is a message of solidarity, to show just after the party congress in Beijing that Taiwan is not to be isolated but that contacts will only increase,” Sjoerdsma said. “We will not be intimidated, and we will be coming over [to Taiwan] more often, and our relations and our friendship are not to be determined by others.”
Sjoerdsma said he and many other Dutch parliamentarians have long been trying to hold substantial dialogue with China, not only on those critical issues but also on matters of mutual interest such as climate change.
Whenever an invitation is extended to Chinese ambassadors to discuss those issues, however, their first response is usually to ask the parliamentarians not to visit Taiwan or speak out about human rights in China, Sjoerdsma said.
IPAC is an international cross-party group of legislators from 29 countries across the world, who are working towards reform on how democratic countries approach China, according to its website.
Els Van Hoof, an IPAC co-chair and a member of the Belgium Chamber of Representatives, said the alliance is not an “anti-China group” but rather it is the opposite.
“We are in IPAC precisely because we are interested in China,” but China’s rise cannot be at the expense of global democracy and human rights, she said at Thursday’s press conference.
Specifically, the status quo in the Taiwan Strait cannot be changed unilaterally by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Van Hoof said.
“We are all united around the belief that internationally based order and human rights are under pressure from the PRC and that we need a different approach; a more coherent and coordinated, effective approach to the PRC,” she said.
The 12-member visiting delegation, led by IPAC co-chair and European Parliament member Reinhard Bütikofer, is scheduled to wrap up its Taiwan visit on Friday.
Bütikofer, who tested positive for COVID-19 after his arrival in Taiwan and was hospitalized, was virtually awarded the Grand Medal of Diplomacy on Thursday by Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), in recognition of his decades-long efforts to promote Taiwan-Germany relations.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel