Maintaining the designation of Oct. 24 as the nation’s UN Memorial day demonstrates the Republic of China’s (ROC) past contributions to the UN and signals its intention to return to the international organization in the future, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Javier Hou (侯清山) said yesterday.
Hou made the remarks when asked to comment on calls by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers who asked the government to remove UN Memorial Day and Anti-Aggression Day — March 14 — from a recently proposed bill that sets to govern the implementation of memorial days and national holiday days.
Both UN Memorial Day and Anti-Aggression Day were designated under the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration. The then-DPP government declared March 14 Anti-Aggression Day as a stern gesture of protest in response to the so-called “Anti-Secession” Law passed by China on March 14, 2005.
The “Anti-Secession” Law gives Beijing the right to “use non-peaceful means and other necessary measures to protect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity … in the event that the ‘Taiwan independence’ secessionist forces should act under any name or by any means to cause the fact of Taiwan’s secession from China.”
UN Memorial Day was declared in 2007 as a part of the then-DPP government’s campaign to promote Taiwan’s entry into the UN.
“The ROC is one of the founders of the UN. Its history cannot be separated from the UN’s development,” he said. “Although it withdrew in 1971, it still observes UN charters.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
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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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