Wife of jailed Taiwanese activist condemns Beijing after she is barred from visits
- NGO worker Lee Ming-che is serving a five-year jail term on the mainland on charges of subverting state power
- His wife, Lee Ching-yu, says she has been temporarily banned from seeing him because she criticised prison conditions last month
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The wife of a Taiwanese activist jailed in mainland China condemned Beijing on Tuesday after she was banned from visiting him in prison for three months in a case that has strained cross-strait ties.
NGO worker Lee Ming-che was sentenced to five years in prison in November 2017 on charges of subverting state power by a court in central Hunan province.
Lee was arrested in March that year during a trip to the mainland and held incommunicado for months.
Taipei has called his jailing “unacceptable” and a serious blow to relations with Beijing, while his wife Lee Ching-yu described his trial as a “political show”.
Wife of jailed Taiwanese activist Lee Ming-che again barred from boarding flight to see husband on mainland
After visiting him in jail, Lee Ching-yu publicly criticised prison conditions last month saying her husband had lost weight because food was often rotten, that he was denied warm clothing and had to work over 10 hours daily.
On Tuesday she said she had since been temporarily banned from seeing her husband because of the criticism, citing a notice from prison authorities who accused her of a “serious distortion of the facts”.
“Lee Ming-che is a prisoner of conscience,” she told reporters.
“I only truthfully recounted what I saw and heard about his situation,” she said.
“I remember he asked me urgently … to ‘go everywhere and tell everybody’ of his treatment in prison,” she added.
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During his trial, Lee admitted the charges, stating that he had written and distributed online articles that criticised the mainland’s ruling Communist Party and promoted democracy.
He had shared “Taiwan’s democratic experiences” with his mainland friends online for many years and often mailed books to them, according to the Taiwan Association for Human Rights.
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Lee Ching-yu urged the mainland government to allow international rights groups and the Mainland Affairs Council, Taiwan’s top cross-strait policymaking body, to visit her husband if she was now banned.
Amnesty International and Taiwanese rights groups have maintained that Lee is innocent and called for his immediate release.
“When families can’t visit [Lee] in prison, we are most worried that he could be subject to torture or other inhumane treatment,” said Annie Huang, Amnesty International Taiwan’s acting section director.
