WHA EXCLUSION:In a meeting with Minister of Health Chen Shih-chung three leaders of the World Medical Association voiced their support for Taiwan’s inclusion
Taipei Times
Date: May 22, 2017
By: Reuters, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
Taiwan hopes its allies stand up to China’s “coercion and threats” that have shut it
A group advocating Taiwan’s joining the WHO yesterday demonstrates outside the Chinese Permanent Mission to the WTO in Geneva, Switzerland. Photo: Lu Yi-hsuan, Taipei Times
out of the UN’s annual World Health Assembly (WHA) meeting, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) told reporters on Saturday.
Thousands of delegates from the WHO’s 194 members are to attend the meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, that opens today, but Chen’s delegation and Taiwanese media are barred.
Chen and his delegation on Saturday arrived in Geneva hoping to meet with officials from nations participating in the WHA meeting while protesting Taiwan’s exclusion from this year’s event.
Taiwan had hoped to attend this year’s session of the WHA — the decisionmaking body of the WHO, which runs through Wednesday next week — as an observer, as it had done the past eight years, but it did not get an invitation from the WHO because of China’s opposition. [FULL STORY]
