President Tsai responds to Pope’s World Day of Peace message

President Tsai Ing-wen wholeheartedly supports the sentiments expressed in Pope Francis’s papal message for World Day of Peace 2018 entitled “Migrants

Taiwan News  
Date: 2018/01/15
By: Taiwan Today,Agencies

President Tsai Ing-wen recently responded to Pope Francis’s papal message for World Day of Peace 2018, supporting his call to embrace those fleeing from war and hunger, or forced by discrimination, persecution, poverty and environmental degradation to leave their homelands.

“The people of Taiwan feel deeply for these people, as their plight reflects our own history, a story of immigrants struggling through blood, sweat, toil and tears,” Tsai said in a letter to the pope. Countries around the world should view the phenomenon of global migration with confidence and see it not as a threat, but as an opportunity for peace, she added.

According to Tsai, the earliest inhabitants of Taiwan were Austronesians and the first wave of large-scale immigration began 300 years ago when people crossed the Taiwan Strait to escape desperate poverty. “Another large wave came in 1949, when some 2 million immigrants were compelled to flee mainland China and came to Taiwan,” she said.    [FULL  STORY]