The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday expressed concerns over the situation in Tibet amid an intensifying crackdown by Chinese authorities and called on President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to voice his concerns to Beijing.
DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said she was “heartbroken” about increasing reports of self-immolation protests by Tibetans in her meeting with Dawa Tsering, director of the Tibet Religious Foundation of H.H. The Dalai Lama, yesterday, said Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴), deputy executive director of the party’s New Frontier Foundation think tank.
Tsai reiterated the DPP’s support for the region’s democratic movement and the well-being of Tibetans in Taiwan, Hsiao said.
Tsering handed Tsai a letter from the Dalai Lama, who expressed his recognition and praise of Tsai’s efforts in Taiwan’s democratic development and in the presidential election last month, she said.
According to Hsiao, the Tibetan spiritual leader also explained the current situation and operation of the Tibetan government-in-exile in the letter, saying that he had withdrawn himself from the political decisionmaking process of and had decided to concentrate on religious affairs.
The DPP released a three-point statement on the latest developments in Tibet after the meeting.
The Ma administration should condemn China’s crackdown on Tibetan activists and actively pay attention to the human rights problems in Tibet, as well as the development of the democratic movement in China, rather than staying mum on the issue, the DPP said.
The party expressed gratitude for the Dalai Lama’s interest in Taiwan’s democracy and his care for Taiwanese who suffer from natural disasters.
Human rights and democracy have always been the DPP’s core values, the party added, and those values should and would be included in Taipei’s engagement with Beijing.
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