The US journalists' group the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) on Friday protested the UN Geneva Office's recent decision to deny Taiwanese reporters access to cover the annual meeting of the World Health Assembly (WHA) being held in Geneva this week.
In a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the group's president, Irwin Gratz, said the UN's new requirement that reporters must be passport holders of UN member states in order to be issued passes to cover UN activities violates Article 19 of the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights which guarantees the right of everyone to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.
The SPJ urged the UN to restore its original policy of issuing press passes to any organization or reporter regardless of their country of origin.
The SPJ, founded in 1909 in Indianapolis, Indiana, is the US' most broad-based organization of journalists and is dedicated to promoting freedom of the press.
The letter was the latest protests by an international press group in support of Taiwanese journalists' right to cover the WHA meeting. The International Federation of Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and the International Society for Human Rights have voiced similar protests.
Taiwanese reporters flocked to Geneva to cover the country's bid to join the WHA as an observer but were turned away by the UN Geneva Office on the grounds that Taiwan is not a UN member.
NETWORK-MAPPING PROJECT: The database contains 170 detailed files of Taiwanese politicians and about 23 million records of household registration data in Taiwan China has developed a network-mapping project targeting political figures and parties in Taiwan to monitor public opinion during elections and to craft tailored influence campaigns aimed at dividing Taiwanese society, according to documents leaked by Chinese technology firm GoLaxy (中科天璣). The documents, collected by Taipei-based Doublethink Lab, showed a database was specifically created to gather detailed information on Taiwanese political figures, including their political affiliations, job histories, birthplaces, residences, education, religion and a brief biography about them. Several notable Taiwanese politicians are in the database, including President William Lai (賴清德), former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍),
RECOGNITION: Former Fijian prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry said that Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy serves as a stabilizing force in the Indo-Pacific region Taiwan can lead the unification of the Chinese people, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former Polish president Lech Walesa said in Taipei yesterday, adding that as the world order is changing, peaceful discussion would find good solutions, and that the use of force and coercion would always fail. Walesa made the remarks during his keynote address at a luncheon of the Yushan Forum in Taipei, titled “Indo-Pacific Partnership Prospects: Taiwan’s Values, Technology and Resilience,” organized by the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Walesa said that he had been at the forefront of a big peaceful revolution and “if
North Korea tested nuclear-capable rocket launchers, state media reported yesterday, a day after Seoul detected the launch of about 10 ballistic missiles. The test comes after South Korean and US forces launched their springtime military drills, due to run until Thursday. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Saturday oversaw the testing of the multiple rocket launcher system (MRLS), the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said. The test involved 12 600mm-caliber ultra-precision multiple rocket launchers and two artillery companies, it said. Kim said the drill gave Pyongyang’s enemies, within the 420km striking range, a sense of “uneasiness” and “a deep understanding
North Korea yesterday fired about 10 ballistic missiles to the sea toward Japan, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, days after Pyongyang warned of “terrible consequences” over ongoing South Korea-US military drills. Pyongyang recently dashed hopes of a diplomatic thaw with Seoul, Washington’s security ally, describing its latest peace efforts as a “clumsy, deceptive farce.” Seoul’s military detected “around 10 ballistic missiles launched from the Sunan area in North Korea toward the East Sea [Sea of Japan] at around 1:20pm,” JCS said in a statement, referring to South Korea’s name for the body of water. The missiles
RSS