Taiwanese Americans took to the streets of New York Saturday to call attention to Taiwan’s exclusion from the UN, just two weeks before Pope Francis is expected to address the 70th UN General Assembly in his first trip as pontiff to the US.
“Every year, we’re gonna shout, we’re gonna fight and we’re gonna be heard,” Outreach for Taiwan co-founder Jenny Wang (汪采羿), one of the organizers, screamed through a microphone as more than 100 people, penned in by New York Police Department metal barricades along Seventh Avenue near Times Square, waved baby-blue “UN for Taiwan” flags.
For 24 years, Taiwanese in New York have staged rallies similar to the one held on Saturday, usually timing them to the start of each new general assembly. Unlike last year’s event, this year’s included a sidewalk march from Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, a park near the UN, to Seventh Avenue between 41st and 42nd streets.
Photo: Chris Fuchs
Chanting “keep Taiwan free,” among other slogans, marchers held aloft UN for Taiwan flags as well as small green-and-white ones, featuring a green image of the nation in the center, as they threaded their way through throngs of tourists and a motley mix of cartoon characters, like Spongebob and Mickey Mouse, who posed for photos in exchange for cash with sightseers visiting Times Square.
Those attending Saturday’s rally — including more than 20 members of the Taiwan-UN Alliance (臺灣聯合國協進會), led by former Defense Minister Michael Tsai (蔡明憲) — said that Taiwan should be allowed to rejoin the UN, which gave the country’s seat to China in 1971.
“Taiwan should really strive to head in this direction,” said Hsu Chin-feng (許青風), a member of the Taiwan-UN Alliance delegation, in Mandarin. “Taiwan can’t be an international orphan.”
Photo: Chris Fuchs
One of only three countries not in the UN, Taiwan has long faced stiff opposition from China in its attempts to join the intergovernmental body. Beijing has argued that Taiwan, which it views as a breakaway province, is not a sovereign nation.
That position doesn’t sit well with Wale Adefope, a Nigerian who was visiting New York on vacation and who just happened to pass by the rally with his son Goodness. The small blue flags were what caught his eye.
“When I saw ‘United Nations for Taiwan,’ it gladdened my heart,” Adefope said, adding that Taiwan and China should both have seats in the UN.
Saturday’s march comes two weeks before the pope embarks on a six-day tour of the US, stopping in New York on Sept. 24 and 25 to say mass at Madison Square Garden and to address the UN. Some of the groups that organized Saturday’s rally were also planning to hold a sit-in at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, near the UN, on the day the pope speaks.
Recognizing the Republic of China as the legitimate government of China, the Vatican, or Holy See, is one of only 23 nations that maintain formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan. In years past, Beijing has protested when Taiwanese presidents have attended Vatican events — such as in 2013, when President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was present for Francis’ inaugural mass — where they were seated with heads of states of countries in the UN.
For Adefope, Taiwan should be able to have its own identity and be free to govern as it chooses.
“Taiwan, even back home in Africa, is well-known,” Adefope said. “And I think it would be nice if China could let go.”
This month it was revealed that China has been telling US officials that the Taiwan Strait is not an international waterway, but China’s territorial waters. “China has sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the Taiwan Straits,” the Global Times thundered last week. The slow, inexorable expansion of China’s territorial claims by land and sea signals that once Taiwan is annexed, this problem of Chinese expansionism will only become more dire. As a solid explainer from The Interpreter observed last year, China treats “territorial waters” as sovereign waters: “China’s interpretation of the territorial sea is that the state has the exclusive
Since moving from Taiwan’s capital to the outlying Penghu islands for the peace and the fishing 11 years ago, Lin Chih-cheng has grown accustomed to the roar of Chinese fighter jets puncturing the lull of the surf. “If there’s a day where they don’t take off, it feels weird,” laughed Lin, an affable 61-year-old who runs a juice stall with his wife on the western Xiyu Islet. The archipelago’s location about 50km out in the Taiwan Strait means it is likely to be on the front line of any potential invasion by China — a perennial possibility that has loomed ever larger
Alan Li no longer sees any future for his family in China after harsh COVID rules decimated his business, upended his son’s education and left his country out of step with the rest of the world. He has given up hope of a return to normal after months of lockdowns in Shanghai, and now plans to close his firm and move to Hungary, where he sees better opportunities and his 13-year-old son can attend an international school. “Our losses this year mean that it’s over for us,” he said wearily, asking to withhold his real name. “We have been using our own cash
Despite the best efforts of local leaders, and the redirection of central-government spending to Taiwan’s south, it sometimes feels as if Pingtung County is sinking into irrelevance. Between 1985 and this year, the number of people living there fell by nearly an eighth to 801,000. Pingtung residents now account for less than 3.5 percent of Taiwan’s population, compared to 4.7 percent in the early 1980s. Owing to its shrinking electorate, the county was stripped of one of its three legislative seats before the 2020 election. Pingtung natives express their pessimism via an idiom: “At the end of the line, all is
RSS