Chen to promote Taiwan’s case at seminars and bilateral meetings

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/05/19
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – According to previously announced plans, Health and Welfare

Minister Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) arrived in Switzerland Saturday to press for Taiwan’s case in the margin of the World Health Assembly (WHA), where China prevented the country from being invited.

Despite its population of 23 million and its high standards of health care, no invitation for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) annual top event had arrived in Taiwan due to Beijing’s continuous efforts to isolate the island. This year’s WHA takes place in Geneva from May 21 to 26.

Speaking to reporters at the airport, Chen said that both President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and Premier William Lai (賴清德) hoped Taiwan could step into the world and explain its values on a global scale, the Central News Agency reported.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/05/19
By: Kuan-lin Liu and Chen Chih-chung

Taipei, May 19 (CNA) Taiwanese high school students won five awards at the annual Intel

International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Friday.

The 2018 competition, said to be the largest international pre-college science competition in the world, brought together nearly 1,800 students from 81 countries for the seven-day event from May 13 to 19.

Taiwan was represented by eight science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) projects presented by a total of 14 students, who were selected by the National Taiwan Science Education Center (NTSEC).

The highest honor Taiwan received at the fair was a second award, given to Yen Po-hsun (顏伯勳) and Lee Shang-jung (李尚融) of Concordia Middle School, a junior and high school institution in Chiayi City, in the engineering category for their “spherical induction motor with hexahedron stator for attitude control.”    [FULL  STORY]

‘IMPORTANT PARTNER’: The bipartisan group told the CEOs of two US airlines that the government stood with them in the face of Chinese pressure over their Web sites

Taipei Times
Date: May 20, 2018
By: Stacy Hsu  /  Staff reporter

In an effort to strike back against China’s growing pressure on global companies to toe

Beijing’s “one China” line, a bipartisan group of eight US senators on Friday wrote to two US airlines that have received such threats, pledging their willingness to defend the companies’ integrity.

The senators’ letters were sent to the CEOs of American Airlines and United Airlines, following a similar letter by US Representative Ted Yoho on Thursday last week.

The Chinese Civil Aviation Administration late last month demanded that the two airlines, along with several other international carriers, list Taiwan as “Taiwan, China” or “the Taiwan Region, China” — a demand that the White House has called “Orwellian nonsense.”

“The Chinese government and [the Chinese] Communist Party are aggressively seeking to marginalize and isolate Taiwan, a democracy and important partner to the US in the Indo-Pacific region, by bullying American companies and foreign countries to sever official ties with Taiwan,” said the group led by US senators Marco Rubio and Bob Menendez, cochair of the Senate Taiwan Caucus.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2018-05-18

Four lawmakers from the majority Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) proposed a new law

on Friday to protect against the spreading of private video and audio materials that could damage their personality.

According to Taiwan’s Civil Code, a citizen’s personality includes their body, health, reputation, liberty, privacy, and other aspects.

The lawmakers said that there have been an increasing number of cases of the malicious unauthorized spreading of video and audio material. Such cases are often categorized as “revenge porn.” The lawmakers said Taiwan currently has no law in place that protects the public against such acts.    [FULL  STORY]

This is the second year in a row that Taiwanese journalists have been denied access to the world’s largest heath policy meeting.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/05/18
By: David Green 

A decision by the United Nations (UN) World Health Organization (WHO) to deny reporting accreditation to Taiwanese journalists has triggered a furor over whether Chinese pressure is forcing the UN to contravene its human rights commitments.

Taiwan’s Central News Agency on Tuesday had accreditation applications for two of its journalists turned down by the WHO. No explanation was given to explain the process behind the decision, but the rejection matches a similar denial of applications from CNA that occurred last year.

Photo Credit: Reuters / TPGA WHO flag is pictured at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, May 23, 2017.
Various press organizations, including the International Federation of Journalists (IJF) and its local affiliate the Association of Taiwan Journalists (ATJ), as well as Reporters Without Borders (RSF), have lambasted the WHO for bowing to Chinese pressure, contravening the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), and a lack of transparency in their process.

Taiwan has not been invited to the WHA for two years in a row, and its press have now been denied access on both occasions.    [FULL  STORY]

Soldier’s condition is improving: hospital

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/05/18
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The military said Friday that there had been no problems with the

care and maintenance of a parachute used by a paratrooper who sustained severe injuries in a fall during preparations for the annual Han Kuang exercises.

Chin Liang-feng (秦良丰) jumped out of a C-130 transport plane flying at an altitude of about 1,300 feet near Taichung Thursday when his parachute failed to open. The 26-year-old was gravely injured in the fall, but his recovery was making steady progress, the Central News Agency reported Friday.

An inspection of his parachute showed that all proper safety rules had been followed, Major General Wu Li-wen (伍立文), head of the Army’s Aviation and Special Forces Command, told the media.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/05/18
By: Elaine Hou and Elizabeth Hsu 

Taipei, May 18 (CNA) Taiwan has not been invited to the annual World Health Assembly (WHA) again this year, but it still intends to have a presence on the sidelines of the event in Geneva, including advertising its strength in the medical field.

The Taipei-based International Cooperation and Development Fund (TaiwanICDF), a government-funded agency that runs foreign aid programs, will hold a presentation on Taiwan’s cooperation projects related to public health in Geneva on May 23, Lee Pai-po (李栢浡), the agency’s deputy secretary-general, told CNA on Friday.

The WHA is being held from May 21 to 26.

At the planned event, TaiwanICDF will share how it helped two allies, Belize and Saint Kitts and Nevis, establish basic facilities to prevent and control chronic kidney disease, which people in those countries are prone to, Lee said.    [FULL  STORY]

TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE: The minister of culture said 1,038 political archives are to be made public to turn ‘the land of political trials into a land of reconciliation’

Taipei Times
Date: May 19, 2018
By: Staff writer, with CNA

A former political prisoner arrested during the Martial Law era praised the establishment of

the National Human Rights Museum yesterday as an important milestone in the history of Taiwanese human rights, saying that an honest review of history is the best way to promote social reconciliation.

Chen Chung-tung (陳中統) made the comments at the opening of the museum at Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park in New Taipei City, the site of the detention facility where he was imprisoned from 1969 to 1978.

Although some have criticized the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government’s promotion of “transitional justice” — saying that it exacerbates social conflict and characterizing it as an attempt to undermine the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) as a political force — the 80-year-old said South Korea and Germany are examples of nations seeking reconciliation by coming to terms with history.

“We political victims spent our youth in jail. We can now choose to forgive, but history is about facts that cannot be forgotten,” Chen said.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2018-05-17

The National Human Rights Museum will remind future generations about those who

suffered persecution during the White Terror era. That was the word from President Tsai Ing-wen on Thursday.

Tsai was speaking at the unveiling ceremony of the new National Human Rights Museum on the offshore Green Island. The island used to be the site of a jail where political prisoners from the White Terror era were held. The White Terror was between 1949 and 1987 where martial law was imposed and political dissidents were persecuted.

At the museum’s opening ceremony, President Tsai said she hopes to take advantage of the new resources and enhance human rights education across Taiwan. She said the education must extend to those working in the public sector to ensure that the government won’t repeat past mistakes.    [SOURCE]

The News Lens
Date: 2018/05/17
By: James X. Morris 

A coalition of NGOs called “Human Rights for Migrant Fishers” held a joint rally in front of the Presidential Office Building in Central Taipei this morning to demand better enforcement of labor laws and an end to systemic abuses of migrant fishermen in Taiwan.

The demonstration, which brings several NGOs together as a group for the first time, was supplemented by a press conference at Greenpeace’s Taipei offices, and was timed to coincide with the second anniversary of Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) inauguration.

The coalition is leveraging the anniversary to push for better enforcement of the Labor Standards Act (LSA), and to protest against labor violations and abuses committed against migrant workers from countries with whom the Tsai administration is trying to foster improved relations.

A press release accompanying the rally stated that Taiwan exports fishing produce worth up to US$2 billion annually, and cited the U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2014 as saying that up to 160,000 migrant workers are employed in the country’s deep-sea fishing industry.    [FULL  STORY]