On 16 May 2022 Safeguard Defenders announced the opening of its first Asian office in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei.
“With our focus on the decline in human rights in China and other authoritarian states in the region, Taiwan was an obvious choice because of its open society and geographic proximity. Only recently emerging from its own authoritarian past, this progressive democracy has now become a popular base for civil society and media, particularly as Hong Kong’s human rights situation rapidly deteriorates under Beijing’s control.”
The story behind Safeguard Defenders goes back to 2009, the year when a small NGO called China Action was founded in Beijing by human rights activists Peter Dahlin from Sweden and Michael Caster from the U.S. and a small group of Chinese rights lawyers and other human rights defenders (HRD). ,,China Action was shuttered in 2016 after Chinese authorities targeted it in a major crackdown and when many of its staff and partners were detained, disappeared or imprisoned, including Peter. The foundation for Safeguard Defenders was laid in 2016, and was publicly launched in 2017. The organisation has inherited the mission of China Action, but with an expanded scope to support the survival and effectiveness of civil society and HRDs in some of Asia’s most hostile environments, including China.
Safeguard Defenders has been researching developing rule of law issues including arbitrary detention, the black jail systems of RSDL and Liuzhi, forced confessions, transnational repression including global harassment and kidnappings, and the CCP’s secret police institution, the National Supervisory Commission. See e,g, : https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/01/18/china-goes-after-dissidents-abroad/
Coming in the next few months, Safeguard Defenders will have several key and ground-breaking reports on China on issues including the practice of sending political prisoners to psychiatric hospitals, the latest violations of human rights in the name of Covid, and how Beijing has weaponized exit bans. It will also be launching a brand new website. Follow on Twitter.
China’s reaction will not be nice…
https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/safeguard-defenders-opens-taiwan-office
https://focustaiwan.tw/politics/202205170025
