Trump Urged To Ask Communist China’s Party Boss To Free American Scholar Detained in June

A prominent American scholar on Communist China and Korea has issued an indictment of China’s dealings with North Korea along with a plea for the release of an American citizen detained in June while attending a conference at the southern Chinese city of Kunming.In charge of Korean issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Victor Cha has called for President Trump to raise the case of the scholar, Min Zin, when Mr. Trump hosts Communist China’s party boss, Xi Jinping, at the White House on Thursday.“No American citizen should be randomly incarcerated in China while attending an academic conference,” Mr. Cha told the House Foreign Affairs East Asia and Pacific subcommittee. “This issue should be on the agenda of the summit.”The case of Mr. Zin, a scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in the land of his birth, Myanmar, is just one of many examples of China’s violations of human rights as cited by Mr. Cha. The issue of human rights is unlikely to dominate the summit, but Mr. Cha hopes the president will request Mr. Zin’s release as he did that of the pastor of an underground church when he saw Mr. Xi in Beijing in May.The pastor, Ezra Jin, was freed – a surprise considering that Mr. Xi did not bestow such mercy on the Hong Kong editor, Jimmy Lai, for whom Mr. Trump also interceded. Mr. Lai, 78, was sentenced in February to 20 years for his criticism of Chinese communist rule in his newspaper, Apple Daily.Mr. Lai’s son, Sebastien, in Washington, called on Mr. Trump again to ask Mr. Xi to free his father. “Let Jimmy Lai come home to his family,” he pleaded, “Let him sit beside his daughter in her hardest moment” while she undergoes chemotherapy in London for cancer. Their father, he said, “has already suffered enough.”Mr. Zin’s wife, Sylvia, told the House committee of the harrowing experiences endured by her husband beginning shortly after he landed in Kunming for what was supposed to have been a three-day conference. She’s comforted by the access the Chinese have granted to a State Department consular officer who sees her husband every month and at least can “reassure us that he is alive,” she said.Even so, he has had to endure several hours of daily interrogation while confined to a tiny cell where the light is always on. Mr. Cha called for Mr. Zin’s release in the closing minutes of accusations of collusion between China and North Korea in which he accused China of “gross violations” of the human rights of North Korean defectors, forced to be returned to North Korea when caught in China.North Korea, Mr. Cha noted, also counts on Moscow thanks to the deals that North Korea’s leader has struck with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin for providing arms and men for Russia’s war in Ukraine, making North Korea “the most visible and committed supporter of Russia’s aggression in Europe.”Beside supplying Russia with up to half its artillery shells and 16,000 troops, the Center for Strategic and International Studies “estimates North Korea may have profited as much as $14 billion so far from its burgeoning relationship with Russia.” North Korea, said CSIS, is also providing workers for a factory in Russia that’s manufacturing Iran-designed drones.“North Korea contributes state-sponsored forced labor,” said Mr. Cha. “China, through a supply network it facilitates, provides the means for Russia to mass-produce the drones. China’s participation exacerbates human rights abuses by enabling Russia to rapidly industrialize and scale the drone factory.”In addition, said Mr. Cha, “China is the main supplier of dual-use components, including batteries, electronics, engines and engine parts, and navigation systems” and “serves as an indirect financier, moving money to Russia through sanction-resistant payment networks.” China, he said, “serves as a transit route for drone components, including Western products, which are shipped through China and Hong Kong.”It’s not clear how strongly Mr. Trump plans to challenge Mr. Xi on such issues while focussing on a wide range of issues, notably trade and tariffs and also China’s claims to the Free Republic of China on Taiwan.Nonetheless, impassioned activists are determined to use the occasion to publicize their campaign for human rights. The Washington-based North Korea Freedom Coalition cited the case of two women who were executed in North Korea nearly three years ago. They were among 600 North Koreans who were forcibly repatriated one night from China.The coalition plans to deliver appeals to Chinese embassies and consulates and stage protests urging Mr. Xi to stop forced repatriation and allow North Koreans to migrate to South Korea and elsewhere.

Trump Urged To Ask Communist China’s Party Boss To Free American Scholar Detained in June

Trump Urged To Ask Communist China’s Party Boss To Free American Scholar Detained in June

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