The friendship between St. Kitts and Nevis and Taiwan remains strong and unwavering, the Caribbean nation's foreign minister Timothy Harris said yesterday in an interview with the Taipei Times.
Harris is in Taipei to attend the grand opening of his nation's embassy today, 25 years after diplomatic ties with Taipei were forged in 1984.
The embassy, which he described as a "historic milestone," will be the first St. Kitts and Nevis has opened in Asia. It is also the first embassy to be set up in Taipei by one of Taiwan's six Caribbean allies.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Harris noted that over the past two-and-a-half decades, Basseterre, the capital of St. Kitts and Nevis, has been an outspoken advocate for Taiwan's bids to enter various international organizations, such as the WHO and the UN.
At the UN last September, Harris told the General Assembly that "it is a grave concern that 23 million people of Taiwan have been denied the right of participation in the UN and its related bodies."
The minister, who publicly supported Taiwan's UN bid using the name "Taiwan" last year, said regardless of the result of Taiwan's upcoming UN referendums, his government would fully back the will of the Taiwanese people.
Harris confirmed that Beijing has never relented in its effort to lure Taiwan's diplomatic allies, but assured Taiwanese that their nation has many good friends who are promoting Taiwan in the Caribbean.
Taiwan's other Caribbean allies are Belize, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, St. Lucia and St.Vincent and the Grenadines.
When asked about his views on the alleged shaky ties between Taiwan and St. Lucia, the minister said that, although he was not authorized to speak on behalf of another nation, he believed relations were "very strong" and that the St. Lucian government was deeply committed to its alliance with Taipei.
Harris also encouraged more Taiwanese businessmen to invest in St. Kitts and Nevis, especially in the tourism industry. He said foreign investors can enjoy a certain level of tax breaks depending on the size of their investment.
Taiwanese tourists were also welcome to visit the tropical nation for leisure, he said. Taiwanese passport holders do not need a visa to travel to St. Kitts and Nevis.
He also called for more Kittitian students to study in Taiwan and take advantage of the quality education available here.
These students, he said, would then become Taiwan's best ambassadors upon graduation, when they go home or venture off to other parts of the world.
The embassy's opening will take place this afternoon in Tienmu. Kittitian Prime Minister Denzil Douglas and Foreign Minister James Huang (黃志芳) are expected to speak at the engagement.
Douglas will be accompanied by several other St. Kitts and Nevis officials, including Charge d'Affaires Jasmine Huggins and Minister of Agriculture Cedric Roy Liburd, who will sign a technical cooperation memorandum of understanding with Huang.
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
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
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