Dissidents Trapped At Airport Allowed Into Taiwan

Two mainland activists who spent more than four months trapped in limbo at Taiwan's biggest airport have been temporarily allowed to stay on the island, officials said on Thursday.

Liu Xinglian, 64, and Yan Kefen, 44, spent 125 days marooned in the transit area of Taoyuan airport after they arrived from Bangkok in September last year.

The pair ran from the mainland because of their political activism and were granted refugee status by the UN in Thailand.

But they fled once more after receiving repeated visits from police in Thailand, a country that has a track record of deporting dissidents back to China and does not recognise asylum claims.

The two men have pending refugee applications in Canada and were hoping Taiwan would allow them to stay while those claims were processed.

Immigration officials refused to grant them entry because they did not have a valid visa. But Taipei was also wary of deporting them, leaving them trapped.

On Thursday, Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), which manages relations with Beijing, said the two men had been granted a temporary visa on humanitarian grounds which would need to be renewed each month.

"They have to leave eventually," MAC spokesperson Chiu Chui-cheng told reporters.

In recent decades, Taipei has been loathe to allow in those fleeing the authoritarian mainland, fearful of angering Beijing or encouraging a deluge.

But the government of President Tsai Ing-wen has also trumpeted its human rights record and has balked at sending any dissidents back to the mainland.

Taiwan has no laws for refugees and officials were keen to stress the pair's entry does not represent a change in policy.

"I have to stress that the assistance we give to these individuals, these methods and processing of asylum cases are not the norm and certainly not standard procedures," Chiu said.

Liu and Yan had earlier expressed gratitude to the Taiwanese government for not deporting them, saying they "do not want to create trouble for Taiwan". (AFP)