Taiwan kicked off its annual media campaign to overcome China's opposition to its UN membership bid yesterday, by wishing the organization an "UNHappy 60th birthday.''
This is the 13th consecutive year Taiwan has tried to gain admission to the UN, but the effort is likely to be quashed by China.
Beijing says Taiwan has no right to join international organizations because it, not Taipei, is responsible for Taiwan's foreign relations. In past years it has put heavy pressure on UN members considering support for Taiwan by threatening diplomatic or other sanctions.
"Taiwan has no way of participating [in the U.N.'s 60th birthday on Sept. 13] even though it has more inhabitants than 140 UN members,'' said Pasuya Yao (
Yao unveiled a series of posters meant to underscore the logic of the new campaign. One showed a black-and-white image of a birthday cake entitled "UNHappy 60th birthday'' with the question "Can a family be happy with one member missing?"
The posters form the backdrop for newspaper and magazine ads debuting in New York, Washington, Tokyo and Brussels on Monday, Yao said.
He said he hoped world leaders attending next month's UN General Assembly session would take notice.
Earlier this month, the government announced that 11 allies had filed a request asking the General Assembly to consider Taiwan's latest bid for admission.
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:
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