The New York-based UN Correspondents Association (UNCA) sent a letter on Wednesday to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calling for the world body to allow Taiwanese journalists to cover the UN and other related activities, including the upcoming World Health Assembly (WHA).
The letter, jointly signed by UNCA members, states that all media workers should be treated on an equal footing regardless of their nationalities or what countries their media organizations belong to.
Taiwanese journalists are banned from covering the WHA meeting every year and excluded from access to the UN and its affiliated agencies.
The letter stated that in light of the press freedom set forth in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all media workers should enjoy the same rights and privileges.
“We believe that in the name of freedom of the press, and in light of the UN Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all journalists should be granted the same rights and privileges,” the letter read.
The UNCA voiced its hope that before resolving the issue of issuing UN press passes to Taiwanese reporters, the UN would first allow Taiwanese reporters to cover the WHA annual meeting scheduled to open on Monday in Geneva.
The Geneva-based Association of Correspondents Accredited to the UN adopted a resolution in March calling for the UN secretary-general to reconsider the discriminatory policy of excluding Taiwanese journalists from covering UN-related activities.
Speaking at a conference marking World Press Freedom Day held on May 1 at the UN headquarters, UNCA president J. Tuyet Nguyen also called for the world body to respect Taiwanese journalists’ news coverage rights.
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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