Taiwanese experts were yesterday abruptly blocked from attending the World Meteorological Congress in Geneva, Switzerland, reportedly due to Chinese pressure.
Weatherrisk Explore Inc (天氣風險管理開發) general manager Peng Chi-ming (彭啟明) and Civil IoT Taiwan information platform convener Lu Chung-chin (呂忠津) were denied entry to the conference room that hosted the congress, which is held every four years, Civil IoT Taiwan wrote on Facebook. It began on Monday last week and runs through Friday.
Peng and Lu had earlier this week joined the meeting as civic observers, but their accreditation was abruptly canceled, it wrote, adding that it suspects that World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Assistant Secretary-General Zhang Wenjian (張文健) was behind the move.
Photo courtesy of Peng Chi-ming
“It is very uncomfortable to encounter such a situation on the spot in Geneva, just as a healthy person is suddenly told that he has cancer,” Peng wrote on Facebook on his way back to Taiwan.
He has Chinese friends working in the profession and they can respect each other’s values, Peng said, adding that he believes the “irrational move” was made by just a few people.
He wants to tell whoever is responsible that “although you have some power, you are losing people’s respect,” Peng wrote.
Taiwan’s representative office in Geneva had asked like-minded countries to express concern over a likely incident to the WMO, but the organization still succumbed to Beijing’s pressure, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
It condemned Beijing for impeding Taiwanese experts from participating in international exchanges in professional affairs and expressed regret over the WMO’s failure to stand firm.
The Chinese government has been imposing its fictitious “one China” principle on global organizations and businesses to the level of insanity, and does not even spare international cooperation in health, climate and disaster prevention, it said.
It would continue demanding that UN-affiliated agencies rectify their biased measures against Taiwanese, the ministry added.
Chinese obstructionism is increasingly felt in global meetings on atmospheric sciences, National Taiwan University Department of Atmospheric Sciences chair Lin Po-hsiung (林博雄) said.
He attended the WMO-backed Technical Conference on Meteorological and Environmental Instruments and Methods of Observation in Belgium in 2012, but did not sign up for its last year’s edition, as Taiwan’s country code has disappeared from its application system, so he only sat in on some speeches, instead of attending as a Chinese, he said.
Taiwan has been filing its weather data with WMO’s Global Telecommunication System through an information exchange center in Tokyo, instead of Beijing, he said.
Information gathered through the Formosat-3 and Formosat-7 satellite constellations — which are Taiwan-US collaborative programs — is processed through the US, he said.
Taiwan should continue working with the US or Europe in atmospheric observations, as well as promoting joint weather studies and disaster prevention with diplomatic allies and Southeast Asian countries, Lin said.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification