The vassals of Beijing -- UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his timid administration -- are once again hiding behind Resolution 2758 instead of protecting the UN Charter for freedom and universal human rights. One might expect Beijing to use Resolution 2758, because communist dictators can never truly understand the rule of law. But one should have much higher expectations of the world's supposed watchdog of liberty and justice.
Instead, the UN has become the watchdog of political correctness, complacence, appeasement and timidity. One good word of chastisement from Annan might shut Beijing up. But Annan's continual pandering to Beijing has emboldened the communist tyrants to use every means to crush Taiwan's very existence. The complicity of the UN in this racism, oppression and imperialism is an indictment of its anachronistic existence. Either it acts the part of an organization designed to protect humanity against naked aggression -- such as that of Beijing against Taiwan, Tibet and the many hundreds of millions oppressed throughout China -- or it should fold its tent and go home.
A recent example of Beijing's heavy-handed and highly public oppression of Taiwan is its attempt to prevent public discussion on Taiwan's application for UN membership through an international group of reporters at the UN. What kind of truly independent and freedom-loving association would bar 23 million people from having a voice in order to argue why they should be allowed to have a voice? But Beijing has relentlessly used the UN as a mouthpiece for its repressive communist dictatorship policies, and Kofi Annan has become Beijing's favorite parrot.
International reporters sought to hold a video conference with President Chen Shui-bian (
As for Resolution 2758, it says nothing about Taiwan or the 23 million people of Taiwan. It merely states that the People's Republic of China represents China, and the "representatives of Chiang Kai-shek (
For Beijing to assert that Resolution 2758 prevents Chen from speaking to the UN is reprehensible enough. But for the UN Secretariat to state it demonstrates that it is merely the mouthpiece of communist China. How tragic.
One cannot be surprised by this turn of events. Instead of leading the world organization with strength and conviction for what is right, Annan has steadfastly done nothing, steering a neutral course to avoid conflict in every case.
How can the UN be proud of anything when black Africans are raped and murdered in Darfur every single day while the UN sits around and debates the definition of "genocide," millions of Tibetans are targeted by Beijing's policy of eugenics and 23 million people in Taiwan are excluded from the world under a legal interpretation of a UN resolution provided by dictators who hold absolute power in a country where there is no rule of law?
Edmund Burke said "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Kofi Annan is the paradigmatic example of this inherent truth. Under his leadership, the UN will never "be all that it can be." His tenure at the UN cannot end too soon.
Lee Long-hwa
United States
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS