Posted by 
China is putting pressure on lawmakers from six countries to not attend a China-focused summit in Taiwan that kicks off on Monday.
While Beijing is well known for its attempts to curb politicians visiting Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, the summit’s organizer — Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) — called the move “unprecedented.”
At least eight politicians were contacted via text, phone calls or through their party’s leadership, including ones from Slovakia, North Macedonia, Bosnia, Bolivia and Colombia, the Associated Press reported. One was asked to travel to China instead, IPAC said.
Lawmakers and others were quick to condemn the news on X, with IPAC Executive Director Luke de Pulford tagging China’s foreign ministry and writing: “You don’t get to decide the travel plans of foreign politicians. Please leave us alone. Thanks.”
“The CCP [Communist Party of China] believes that it can use pressure and coercion to stop democratically elected legislators from gathering,” Slovakian MEP Mariam Lexmann, who co-chairs IPAC, wrote in a post on X. “We will not be deterred, nor will our commitment to working with our partners to defend freedom and democracy waver.”
IPAC is a group of hundreds of lawmakers from 35 countries focused on how democracies interact with China. Shortly after the AP’s report, it “decided to bring forward its announcement of our largest ever enlargement,” saying that Colombia, Iraq, Malawi, Solomon Islands, the Gambia and Uruguay have joined the organization.
