The chief secretary of Sao Tome and Principe’s presidential office arrived in Taipei yesterday on the heels of a visit to China by the president of one of Taiwan’s African allies that some speculated would lead to an end of formal ties with Taipei.
During his four-day visit, Amaro Couto is scheduled to meet with Presidential Office Secretary-General Timothy Yang (楊進添) and Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lin (林永樂), said Winston Hu (胡正浩), deputy director-general of the ministry’s Department of West Asian and African Affairs.
According to a diplomatic source, Taiwan is to ask Couto to provide a briefing on the recent visit by Sao Tomean President Manuel Pinto da Costa to China that reportedly included stops in Beijing and Shanghai.
The chief secretary’s visit is seen as a good opportunity to learn more about the details of Pinto da Costa’s trip, the source said.
On June 6, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement expressing the nation’s concern about Pinto da Costa’s China trip and asked Sao Tome and Principe to avoid damaging its long-standing diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
The statement also said that in a letter dated June 4, Pinto da Costa told President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) that the visit to Shanghai was being made in a private capacity to solicit investment in his nation’s deep-water harbor.
The Sao Tomean president also stressed in the letter that he cherished the friendly and cooperative relations with the Republic of China (ROC) and will continue to strengthen bilateral relations, the foreign ministry said.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) tried last week to play down Pinto da Costa’s visit, saying that the only information she had was that the president was on a private visit to attend a “trade and business activity.”
Taiwan and Sao Tome and Principe have maintained close relations for many years. The West African nation established diplomatic relations with Taipei in 1997.
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