Lawmakers and doctors yesterday accused China of maneuvering to exclude Taiwan from this year’s World Health Assembly (WHA) and said that Taiwan should seek participation without any political preconditions.
The WHA, the decisionmaking body of the WHO, is scheduled to hold its annual meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, from May 22 to May 31. The WHO secretariat has not yet issued an invitation to Taiwan.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus and the Taiwan Medical Association (TMA) yesterday urged the WHO to issue the invitation by the registration deadline on Monday next week.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
“The exclusion of Taiwan from the WHA is political and health apartheid, an act of injustice by Beijing,” DPP Legislator Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) said.
“The founding philosophy of the WHA is health for all, but the reality is health for all except for Taiwanese,” Lo said.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said in an interview last week that the WHA meeting would be an important indicator of relations between Taiwan and China, and Beijing should understand the implication of Taiwan’s absence from the WHA on cross-strait relations, Lo said.
“Many WHA members support Taiwan’s participation and Beijing’s intervention has destabilized international peace,” Lo said.
The SARS epidemic in 2003 is proof that diseases are not bound by borders and Taiwan’s exclusion from the WHA would create a loophole in the global disease prevention network, he added.
DPP Legislator Wang Ding-yu (王定宇) slammed the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for asking the government to accept the so-called “1992 consensus” to ensure WHA invitation.
The “1992 consensus” refers to a tacit understanding between the KMT and the Chinese government that both sides of the Taiwan Strait acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what that means.
“The acceptance of the 1992 consensus and its ‘one China’ framework would make Taiwan a part of Beijing’s delegation. Is the KMT speaking for China or Taiwan?” Wang said.
There should be no preconditions for WHA membership, and using membership as political leverage runs counter to the principles on which the WHO is founded, Lo said.
Taiwan is an important contributor to global immunization and disaster relief, and the nation’s health insurance system ensures quality and affordable healthcare to all citizens, which has been closely studied by governments and international medical bodies, DPP Legislator and TMA president Chiu Tai-yuan (邱泰源) said.
Taiwan is ranked first in Asia and sixth in the world in terms of palliative care, and this global leader in healthcare and medicine should not be excluded from the WHA for political reasons, Chiu said.
China has also attempted to pressure the World Medical Association (WMA) to rename the TMA the “Taiwan China Medical Association,” TMA secretary-general Wang Bi-sheng (王必勝) said.
The Chinese association issued a written request during the WMA general assembly in Zambia last month for the name change, but the request was rejected because WMA members understood that the TMA is a non-political body and the issue should not be treated politically, Wang said.
“China had made informal proposals to change the name of the TMA, but it was the first time it issued a written request. It is expected that China will make another formal request at the general assembly in October,” Wang said.
Chiu and DPP Legislator Lin Ching-yi (林靜儀) said they would seek to participate in the WHA as members of non-governmental organizations.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS