Taiwan's Lack of an Asylum Law
Taiwan prides itself as a beacon of human rights in Asia, but it does not have a system of asylum laws in place.
On this episode of "Zoom In Zoom Out," TaiwanPlus reporter Sally Jensen speaks with Kristína Kironská, an assistant professor at Palacký University in the Czech Republic and an expert on international human rights. They first zoom in on the refugees who show up at Taiwan's borders, then zoom out to look at how Taiwan's approach to asylum seekers fits into the global context.
On this episode of "Zoom In Zoom Out," TaiwanPlus reporter Sally Jensen speaks with Kristína Kironská, an assistant professor at Palacký University in the Czech Republic and an expert on international human rights. They first zoom in on the refugees who show up at Taiwan's borders, then zoom out to look at how Taiwan's approach to asylum seekers fits into the global context.
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Welcome to Zoom In, Zoom Out,
00:14 your in-depth look at news from Taiwan and around the world.
00:18 I'm Sally Jensen.
00:19 There are many reasons why someone might have
00:22 to leave their home and seek shelter in another country.
00:26 This year has seen an increasing amount of global conflicts
00:29 and natural disasters,
00:30 forcing millions to search for safety abroad.
00:33 And some are hoping to find it in Taiwan.
00:37 But how does Taiwan respond to those seeking its help?
00:42 To discuss this, we're joined today by Kristina Kuronska,
00:45 an assistant professor at Palacki University
00:48 in the Czech Republic.
00:50 She focuses on human rights issues
00:52 relating to Myanmar, China, and Taiwan.
00:55 Thank you for joining us today.
00:57 - Thank you for having me.
00:59 - So first of all, can we just talk about a little bit
01:02 about your background and what got you interested in Taiwan
01:05 and specifically human rights issues in Taiwan?
01:08 - So I first came to Taiwan as a student back in 2008,
01:12 and later I came back to teach at the University of Taipei.
01:16 And since then, I keep coming back either for teaching
01:19 or for doing some research.
01:21 Well, Taiwan is a very fascinating place.
01:23 And also it has a very good track record
01:26 when it comes to human rights,
01:28 but there's still lots of issues.
01:30 And some of the issues, for example,
01:32 the one that we will be talking about today,
01:34 have to do a lot with politics
01:36 and in particular with cross-strait relations.
01:39 So this way I can combine my background
01:41 in political science, but then also human rights.
01:45 - And let's, I mean, look a little bit
01:46 about these cross-strait issues and some recent events.
01:51 So recently we saw three Chinese dissidents
01:53 arrive in Taoyuan Airport, Taiwan's main airport,
01:57 and they were seeking asylum or refuge here in Taiwan,
02:00 at least temporarily,
02:02 before they could go to a third country.
02:04 And this isn't the first instance of that.
02:06 We're seeing a lot of Chinese exiles
02:08 or dissidents arriving in Taiwan.
02:11 So my question is, how many people are arriving in Taiwan?
02:16 How many of them are from China?
02:18 - We don't have exact numbers
02:20 because since there's no asylum law,
02:23 there's also no official statistics.
02:25 So basically whenever we find out about these cases,
02:27 it would be from the media
02:29 or from the civil society organizations,
02:31 or then they have their sources in the government.
02:34 And looking at who really comes to Taiwan,
02:38 I would categorize it into two groups.
02:41 So one group would be the Chinese dissidents,
02:43 the Hong Kong protesters, Tibetans,
02:46 and then also descendants of the ROC army in Myanmar.
02:51 And we could group these people together
02:54 as people that are somehow by the ROC constitution
02:57 not regarded exactly as foreigners.
03:00 And then we have the second group
03:01 where these people would be refugees from Syria,
03:04 maybe en route to Europe, for example,
03:08 or then we would have LGBTI asylum seekers,
03:13 people that have heard that Taiwan is a good place
03:15 for LGBTI people,
03:17 just not knowing that Taiwan doesn't have an asylum law.
03:21 And maybe a last group that is connected to this issue
03:25 could be children that are born to migrant workers in Taiwan,
03:30 children that are not registered at their embassies here
03:34 or the representative offices,
03:37 if they stay unregistered and in Taiwan
03:39 until they reach the age of 18.
03:41 And again, they would benefit from having an asylum law
03:45 and being able to claim refugee status in Taiwan.
03:50 So you've just talked about a diverse range of people
03:53 who could arrive in Taiwan seeking refuge.
03:58 Could you tell us, what kind of conditions are they fleeing back home?
04:03 I would say the people flee for the same reasons
04:06 like refugees in other countries.
04:09 One group that we could talk about is Myanmar refugees,
04:13 people that are fleeing from the violent situation back in their country
04:18 because there has been a coup attempt in 2021.
04:22 So this would be a good example of people who maybe came to Taiwan
04:26 to study or to work,
04:28 but now are looking for avenues how to stay in Taiwan
04:31 and not to have to go back to their country.
04:35 So if we can now zoom out on Taiwan's response
04:39 to these refugees and asylum seekers,
04:42 because of course there are so many different kinds of people
04:45 arriving in Taiwan hoping to get some help.
04:49 But what happens to a refugee when they arrive in Taiwan?
04:54 So first of all, they can't really go through the regular process.
04:59 So they're dealt with on a case-by-case basis,
05:01 which in itself is quite problematic.
05:03 Usually they have to rely on the help of civil societies
05:07 and NGOs that are helping these refugees.
05:11 So you've spoken about this case-by-case basis.
05:15 People are dealt with differently.
05:16 Can we talk about the kind of legal framework
05:18 that Taiwan has at the moment to deal with these asylum seekers?
05:24 So it really depends a bit on the luck of the asylum seeker,
05:28 who they find, which organisation is going to help them,
05:32 what kind of avenues those organisations have
05:36 and what kind of context in the government they have.
05:39 And why is there this lack of a structure,
05:42 a formal legal structure to help these people
05:45 who are looking for Taiwan's help?
05:47 What is it about Taiwan?
05:49 Other countries have systems in place.
05:51 Why does Taiwan not have them?
05:54 This is a very good question,
05:55 because Taiwan is really a place that works on its human rights
06:00 and puts various things in place,
06:04 but it doesn't have an asylum law.
06:06 And here the connection is very much with the cross-strait relations,
06:11 the Taiwan-China relationship,
06:14 because specifically about refugees and asylum seekers in the society,
06:18 there are these three concerns.
06:20 One is a legal concern.
06:22 For example, if a Chinese national arrived in Taiwan,
06:25 how would this person be labelled as a refugee?
06:29 According to the international law,
06:31 a refugee is someone that has to cross the border.
06:34 But we know that the ROC constitution
06:37 does not really consider PRC or Chinese nationals foreigners.
06:42 So this is the first problem.
06:44 The second one is that many people are afraid
06:48 that China would send over spies.
06:50 But here personally, I think there's much better ways
06:53 how to do the spying job than through a refugee.
06:57 And the third concern in the Taiwanese society is
07:00 that Taiwan would be flooded with refugees.
07:06 And does Taiwan not being part of the UN,
07:09 does this play into all of that?
07:11 I mean, you've said partly to do with the China relationship.
07:16 Is it also because Taiwan isn't bound to UN conventions on refugees?
07:21 Yes. So Taiwan is basically on its own
07:24 when it comes to putting some refugee system in place.
07:30 Even though Taiwan is not a UN member,
07:33 it has adopted five international covenants
07:36 that are now part of Taiwan's domestic law.
07:41 For example, the ICCPR and the ICSCR,
07:44 which has the non-refoulement principle.
07:47 This is a principle where if you receive asylum seekers
07:51 from other countries, you're not supposed to send them back
07:54 to a place where they could face persecution
07:57 or any other dangerous situation.
08:00 So Taiwan is actually bound by this non-refoulement principle
08:05 because it has adopted those covenants into domestic law.
08:09 And these covenants are reviewed every five years
08:12 by international human rights lawyers.
08:15 And every time they come to Taiwan for this review process,
08:19 they find, or one of their recommendations is,
08:21 that Taiwan should adopt a refugee law specifically
08:26 because of this non-refoulement principle.
08:34 How does Taiwan's public generally respond
08:38 to people arriving on its shores?
08:41 Oh, so this is actually very interesting
08:43 because since we don't have numbers of the asylum seekers
08:48 arriving in Taiwan, there's also not a lot of talk
08:51 in the Taiwanese society about this issue.
08:54 And this then means that there's also not many statistics
09:00 or opinion polls about what people think.
09:03 So I spoke earlier about those three concerns,
09:06 but this is kind of hearsay.
09:10 This is not based on any hard data.
09:13 So me and my colleagues, we have actually conducted
09:15 an opinion poll, a large-scale opinion poll,
09:19 a representative one, and we asked specifically
09:22 about questions related to a potential asylum law
09:25 and also how people feel about receiving refugees.
09:29 So you've mentioned conducting some opinion polls.
09:32 Can you tell us what the findings of these were?
09:36 So people actually tend to have a more positive
09:41 rather than negative response to adopting an asylum law
09:45 in Taiwan, although the majority of the people
09:49 answered that they don't know.
09:51 This kind of shows that there is a lack of discussion
09:55 about this, and this is why many people have never
09:57 thought about this.
09:59 Also, whenever I talk about this issue to people in Taiwan,
10:02 many of them are surprised that Taiwan doesn't have
10:05 an asylum law.
10:07 And some more findings show us that people feel quite
10:11 favorably towards potential refugees,
10:15 and we asked specifically about war refugees,
10:18 such as Syrians.
10:19 We asked about Hong Kong protesters.
10:23 We asked about Fohinger refugees,
10:26 and we also asked about Chinese dissidents.
10:29 And with all these groups, people feel quite favorably
10:32 towards them, maybe with the exception of the Chinese.
10:36 And are there other reasons that there might be
10:39 kind of certain preferences between the distinctions
10:42 of the different types of refugees that arrive?
10:45 Because we see also in your research that Taiwanese people
10:48 respond differently to different groups.
10:50 Why is that?
10:52 So we wanted to test this with a mix of groups,
10:55 a mix of ethnic, religious groups.
10:59 So we asked about, for example, Muslims, about Africans,
11:05 Europeans, people from Syria, people from Myanmar.
11:09 And with all these groups, we still got a positive response.
11:14 The only one that stood out were people from the PRC.
11:19 And is that due to these fears that you mentioned before
11:23 of spying, or why are they so?
11:27 I think this goes back to the very complicated
11:29 and very tense relationship between China and Taiwan.
11:34 We went a little deeper, and we asked about different groups
11:38 of Chinese people.
11:39 So we divided this question into politicians, dissidents,
11:45 Chinese spouses, Chinese students, and Chinese tourists.
11:49 And here, we could nicely see that people
11:52 felt the most negative towards politicians
11:56 and the most positive towards Chinese students
11:58 here in Taiwan.
12:00 Your research and your discussions
12:02 with ordinary Taiwanese people have
12:04 shown that people are quite surprised that there's
12:07 no asylum law.
12:07 There is a positive feeling towards refugees
12:11 who arrive here.
12:12 So what is the government, if anything,
12:16 are they taking away from these findings
12:18 and thinking of implementing something?
12:21 So the problem is that whenever there
12:23 is a new draft law in the parliament,
12:25 in the legislative UN, and it's not picked up further
12:29 for discussion and not passed as a law, with each term,
12:34 it gets thrown out.
12:35 And you have to restart the process every time.
12:38 So since there have been elections now,
12:41 we'll have to watch closer what happens now.
12:44 So I know that a new draft law is already in preparation
12:48 and should be sent to the legislative UN
12:52 in the coming months.
12:53 What kind of non-governmental recourses
12:56 do they have access to?
12:58 In the case of the Hong Kong protesters that came to Taiwan,
13:01 it was actually a coalition of NGOs that were helping.
13:05 And some were providing financial assistance,
13:08 some were helping find accommodation,
13:09 some were helping with legal issues,
13:11 some were providing psychological assistance.
13:14 So they joined forces.
13:16 And since there was a lack of response from the government,
13:20 they were helping these people.
13:22 Later on, there was a specific agency
13:25 established by the government that
13:26 was supposed to take over these tasks from these NGOs.
13:30 But the NGOs are still closely involved in helping them.
13:35 Do you think the number of refugees arriving in Taiwan
13:39 is going to increase?
13:40 Or how do you see these situations developing?
13:43 This is very difficult to predict.
13:45 But in general, I think it's much better
13:48 to have some mechanism in place.
13:52 And then in case something happens,
13:53 like we have seen the Russian aggression in Ukraine, which
13:57 is very far from here, but then also much closer,
14:00 the Myanmar coup, and all kinds of other issues
14:05 happening in the world, it's much better to be prepared.
14:08 And once this happens, to know what to do
14:11 and how to process these asylum seekers.
14:15 Thank you so much for your insight, Christina.
14:17 It's been great having you on the show.
14:19 Thank you for having me.
14:21 This has been Zoom In, Zoom Out.
14:23 You can get more stories from Taiwan Plus
14:26 by following us on social media.
14:28 Thanks for watching.
14:29 We'll see you next time.
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