Exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama has reiterated his wish to visit Taiwan in an interview with a Taiwanese cable news channel broadcast yesterday.
“I am very eager since my first and second visit,” he said in an interview in India with FTV, referring to his first trip to Taiwan in March 1997 and again in 2001.
The Dalai Lama had voiced his desire to visit Taiwan in an interview last year with a local newspaper in Dharamshala, the town in northern India where his exiled government has been based since a failed uprising in 1959.
But President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has said the timing was not right. Ma’s response drew an outcry in Taiwan.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has accused Ma of kowtowing to Beijing, while some members of his Chinese Nationalist Pary (KMT) have also urged him to reconsider the issue.
When asked about Ma’s remarks, the Dalai Lama replied: “I am eager but [the visa] is not finalized ... I do not want to create unnecessary inconvenience.”
He said he thought the Chinese government was “very sensitive” about any potential visit by him to Taiwan.
In the interview, the 73-year-old also shrugged off concerns about his health after he underwent surgery to remove gallstones last year, saying that his doctors told him he had the health of someone 10 years younger.
The Dalai Lama is reviled by the Chinese government, which has branded him a “monster” and has accused him of trying to split the nation.
In December last year, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus boycotted a motion proposed by the DPP caucus welcoming a visit by the Dalai Lama.
The motion failed to pass the legislative session after the KMT asked that it be referred to cross-party negotiation, meaning the proposal could be held up for at least one month.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS