The New York Times
Date: Aug. 1, 2018
By: Chris Horton

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan has had a rough time of it lately.

Just last week, international airlines stopped using its name; it lost hosting rights to a youth sports festival; and even a local children’s choir took a blow, prevented from singing at a United Nations building in Vienna.

Amid those and other recent setbacks — blamed on pressure from China, which claims the self-governing island as its territory — has come a welcome bit of recognition. Taiwan has been chosen as the first Asian host for the Oslo Freedom Forum, an international human rights conference.

The forum hosts rights campaigners, dissidents, philanthropists and tech entrepreneurs from around the world. Speakers at the Nov. 10 event in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, are scheduled to include Mu Sochua, a Cambodian opposition politician living in exile, and Yeonmi Park, a North Korean defector.

For Taiwan, which China has used its clout to keep out of many global organizations, it amounts to a kind of international validation — from the world’s dissidents, if not its governments. Jason Hsu, a lawmaker with the opposition Kuomintang party, said the event would underscore Taiwan’s growing role as a democratic model in the region, while contrasting it with authoritarian China.    [FULL  STORY]