The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) yesterday said its caucus would put forth a proposal in the legislature today to invite exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama to visit Taiwan after the government refused to grant him a visa last month.
President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration denied the Dalai Lama a visa to speak at the Asia-Pacific regional conference of the International Federation of Business and Professional Women, saying the timing was not “opportune.”
The refusal reflects Ma’s kowtowing to China and pro-Beijing stance while sacrificing his previous pledge to uphold human rights, TSU Legislator Huang Wen-ling (黃文玲) told a press conference.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
Huang said her party could not turn a blind eye to the deteriorating human rights situation in Tibet, where at least 94 Tibetans had set themselves on fire and died over the past three years.
The proposal is to seek a legislative resolution to demand the government officially condemn Beijing’s brutal oppression of Tibetans and establish a panel to probe into the growing number of self-immolations, she said.
“We would also like to invite the Dalai Lama to visit Taiwan to highlight the value the nation places on human rights,” Huang said.
Ma has ignored several issues, including human rights violations and the plight of political prisoners in China, since taking office in 2008, TSU Legislator Lin Shih-chia (林世嘉) said.
Taiwan should pay close attention to what is happening in China — in particular in Tibet — because “what is happening in Tibet now could happen to Taiwan in the future,” Lin said.
The Council of Agriculture yesterday signed a Taiwan-Australia Agricultural Cooperation Implementation clause to open a new export market for the nation’s pineapple crop. The clause is an addition to existing cooperation measures, it said. China on Friday last week abruptly announced that it would suspend pineapple imports from Taiwan starting on Monday, on grounds that it had on multiple occasions discovered “harmful organisms” in shipments of the fruit. The public and private sectors have since joined hands to purchase the local fruit to help the nation’s pineapple farmers. Canberra has requested that all pineapples for export to Australia have their crown buds removed,
Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group might have lost its right to distribute the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for COVID-19 and the ability to fulfill a contract in Taiwan, civic groups Taiwan Citizen Front and the Economic Democracy Union said yesterday. In a radio interview on Feb. 17, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), head of the Central Epidemic Command Center, said that last year, Taiwan was close to signing a contract to buy doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but that the deal was halted at the last moment, with some speculating that Chinese interference was to blame. On Monday last week, the center
A Tainan taxi driver is the Taiwanese with the longest name, after he last month changed it so that it now contains 25 characters, the Anping District Household Registration Office said. The 47-year-old man, formerly known as Huang Hsin-hsiang (黃鑫翔), applied for the name change on Feb. 26, in the hope that it would bring him good luck. His new name starts with Huang Da-lan (黃大嵐) and adds another 22 characters, meaning “Huang Da-lan is the blessed darling and sweetheart of the god of joy, god of wealth, god of misfortune, god of Earth and all the gods,” it said. With
Broadcasting Corp of China chairman Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) yesterday said that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) “should not follow the Democratic Progressive Party’s [DPP] direction,” after KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) had said that China posed a threat to Taiwan. Chiang was quoted by Reuters as saying during an interview that China’s “one country, two systems” formula for an unification with Taiwan “has no market” in the nation. Chiang also described China as the major threat to Taiwan, Reuters reported. Jaw, who has expressed interest in running for KMT chairman this year and in the 2024 presidential election, wrote on Facebook that