A Department of Health official canceled a trip to Bangkok yesterday in protest over the Thai government's requirement that visitors from Taiwan wear masks while on Thai soil amid the global outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
Li Jih-heng (
But Li said he decided to cancel the trip after he received an emergency notice from conference organizers saying that Thai health authorities have demanded that all passengers from China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Taiwan and Singapore undergo physical checkups upon arrival and wear surgical masks throughout their stays in Thailand.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
"The demand is excessive and unreasonable, " Li said, adding that Taiwan is not on a list of areas to which the World Health Organization [WHO] has warned against traveling.
"Therefore, I decided to cancel the trip to protest against the unfriendly Thai move," he said.
Li, a member of the organizing committee of the IEA meeting, said the protest was directed at the Thai government and had nothing to do with the conference.
Following Li's cancelation of the trip, Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung (
Lin said that information concerning the Bangkok's restrictions on Taiwanese tourists is erratic, and that before Thailand gives an official clarification, the government will try to find out through diplomatic and private channels whether Taiwanese are being discriminated against.
Lin said that Li's decision "can be understood," based on the protection of national dignity and personal interests.
On Friday, DPP Legislator Lo Shih-hsiung (羅世雄) threatened to launch a national campaign to boycott travel to Thailand unless the Bangkok withdrew its measures.
In related news, a credit card manager said yesterday that credit card spending nationwide might decrease by NT$16 billion (US$461 million) this year if the SARS outbreak is not controlled.
Tina Chiang (
China, Hong Kong, and Macao absorb about 40 percent of the country's outbound travelers a year.
Chiang estimated that if the SARS impact lasts for three months, credit card spending by Taiwanese cardholders will drop by NT$4 billion this year, but if the epidemic continues without efficient control, the decrease in this year's credit card spending will quadruple.
Spending with MasterCard grew by 30 percent during the first two months of this year over the same period of last year, she said, but estimated that purchases last month and this month will drop because of the war in Iraq and the spread of SARS.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching