Despite rising chaos in the troubled Solomon Islands, ties between Taipei and Honiara remain stable, said a foreign ministry official after confirming that Taipei issued a US$1 million check to the country's prime minister yesterday.
"The political situation is very stable there and it won't affect our bilateral ties," Peter Cheng (鄭博久), director-general of the foreign ministry's department of East Asian and Pacific affairs, told the Taipei Times.
Cheng's remarks came in the wake of the recent escalation of tension in the capital of the Pacific country. Police on Wednesday erected razor wire barricades around the prime minister's office and the nation's finance department.
The finance department has been unable to pay civil servants for more than a month.
Cheng also confirmed an AFP report filed from Honiara yesterday that said Taiwan ambassador Teng Pei-yin (
"The amount was in Solomon Island dollars," Cheng clarified, which is roughly US$1 million.
State-run Solomon Islands Broadcasting (SIBC) said some of the money would be used for the razor wire fencing and 500,000 Solomon Island dollars would be sent to Fiji to pay school fees for Solomon Islands students at the University of the South Pacific.
Cheng said the latest financial aid package from Taiwan was "long term" in nature and would pay for "a man-power training program" and "a security program."
Solomon Islands is one of five remaining diplomatic allies Taiwan has in the Pacific region, after Nauru, switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing last month. Taipei currently has 27 diplomatic allies.
When contacted yesterday evening, a Honiara-based Taiwanese diplomat confirmed that Taiwan last year promised to lend the troubled state US$25 million.
"But so far we've only given out US$20 million," said the diplomat, who declined to be named.
The diplomat also said disorder in the capital of the Pacific nation was worsening.
"The government has surrounded the prime minister's office and the finance office with razor wire barricades" to keep out angry crowds, he said.
The war-torn Solomon Islands sank into deeper confusion yesterday after Kemakeza sacked his foreign minister and then promptly said he had made a mistake.
Foreign Minister Alex Bartlett, who was a key member of an illegal militant group, was bitterly critical of his sacking and threatened to pull out of the ruling coalition.
"You will hear more discussion over the coming days over this issue because the man is not right, the actions he has taken are completely outrageous and are not in the interests of healing the nation," he told the Radio New Zealand International.
The Solomons has been facing bankruptcy after a war provoked by militants destabilized the country.
The militants, currently known as the Isatambu Freedom movement, live on the main island of Guadalcanal.
The war began when the militants attempted to drive out migrants from the neighboring island Malatia.
In the war around 100 people have been killed in a country, once known as "The Happy Isles," of just 300,000 while 20,000 people have lost their homes.
Malaita responded with the formation of the Malaita Eagle Force, whose leadership included Bartlett, which counter-attacked and staged a coup in 2000, taking over Honiara.
Following democratic elections last December, peace slowly returned but a Guadalcanal warlord, Harold Keke, killed 10 Malaita men last month.
On Monday, Kemakeza reshuffled his Cabinet, downgrading Bartlett to the tourism portfolio and moving eight others down. Kemakeza announced yesterday he was sacking Bartlett altogether.
But later Robert Goh, an official in Kemakeza's department, issued a statement saying the sacking was an error and had been rescinded.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS