Seventy-eight of the 134 Tibetans living in exile in Taiwan who applied for residency earlier this month have received permission to stay in the country.
The Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission (MTAC) said the other 56 failed to make it because the commission could not verify their status as Tibetan refugees.
More than 100 Tibetans living in Taiwan without proper documents staged a sit-in demonstration at Liberty Square in Taipei last December, asking the government to grant them asylum.
The majority entered Taiwan on tourist visas using Indian or Nepalese passports — many of which were forged — several years ago.
In response, the Legislative Yuan passed amendments to the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法) authorizing the National Immigration Agency (NIA) to grant them residency once their Tibetan refugee status was verified by the MTAC.
After an initial review, about 110 Tibetans who took part in the demonstration received temporary, one-year residency permits so they could stay in Taiwan legally while their applications for permanent residency were being processed.
After the residency application and verification process began, more people applied, bringing the total to 134.
“We carefully examined each case. We collected documents, including passports, birth certificates, school diplomas and anything else that could prove their identity,” MTAC chief secretary Chien Shih-yin (錢世英) told the Taipei Times by telephone.
The applicants were interviewed by the NIA and the MTAC, while the MTAC double-checked their documents, Chien said, adding that it was during this process that the commission questioned the refugee status of the 56.
“We understand that they may not all have obtained their passports via the proper channels, so we asked them to provide other documents or contact information of families or friends in India or Nepal,” Chien said.
“We contacted these people and the issuing authorities for the documents and found that some of the applicants had not told the truth or given false information,” Chien said.
Some of them were found to be unfamiliar with either basic Tibetan phrases or Tibetan costumes.
“We understand that many of them grew up in exile and may not speak Tibetan fluently or have an in-depth understanding of Tibetan culture. But we found it hard to believe that some of them didn't even know what a khata is,” Chien said.
A khata is a traditional Tibetan scarf-like item made of silk and is used by Tibetans when giving guests, Buddhist masters or Buddhas a gesture of respect or welcome.
Chien said the 56 applicants may file an appeal if they could find more evidence to support their claim.
However, some Tibetans, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Taipei Times that only those who would “were on good terms with MTAC officials” were granted residency.
Dawa Tsering, chairman of the Tibet Religious Foundation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the de factor representative of the Tibetan government in exile in Taiwan, questioned the MTAC's verification process.
“The MTAC initially granted temporary residency to some 110 Tibetans, but now, about 20 to 30 of them did not pass the commission's second review,” Dawa said. “I don't understand this.”
When asked if he would help those rejected, Dawa said because the MTAC was founded on the belief that Tibet is part of the Republic of China, it was policy not to deal with it, but he added that they would do their best to help them.
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