TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A Taiwanese legislator on Wednesday (March 4) criticized Taiwanese businesspeople stranded in the Chinese city of Wuhan for trying to sue President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) instead of standing up to Beijing.
Although 247 Taiwanese businesspeople and spouses were evacuated from Wuhan via a charter flight on Feb. 6, no other flights have been arranged since due to conflicts between China and Taiwan over the terms of their return.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said on Feb. 14 that plans for a second charter flight have been stalled by the Chinese government after a variety of excuses, including a demand to follow the model of the first controversial evacuation flight by using China Eastern Airlines instead of Taiwan's China Airlines, leaving roughly 1,000 Taiwanese businesspeople stranded.
In recent days, some of the stranded Taiwanese have complained that Tsai has deprived them of their right to return home and have threatened to sue her administration for "violating the Constitution." In response, Taiwan Statebuilding Party (TSP, 台灣基進) legislator Chen Po-wei (陳柏惟) on Wednesday said that the government is very much aware of their plight but that "It is China that has trapped you. Yet you blame Taiwan, which totally proves that you don't even have the guts to criticize China," reported SET News.
Chen said that both the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) and the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) are working hard to negotiate with China, stressing that it is not the Taiwanese government that is preventing them from returning home.
The legislator said the real difficulty is that China is unwilling to cooperate with Taiwan's epidemic prevention measures and agree to allow Taiwan to use its own planes. "It is not our government that is causing these difficulties, so I think it is unreasonable," said Chen.
The following is a Facebook meme that includes Chen's criticism of Taiwanese trapped in Wuhan for "not having the guts to criticize China."