The Ministry of Foreign Affairs should apply for entry to the UN under the name of “Taiwan,” pro-independence advocates said at a rally outside the ministry’s office in Taipei yesterday.
Yesterday was the 70th anniversary of the founding of the UN.
About 100 members of the Taiwan United Nations Alliance, Free Taiwan Party and other pro-independence groups marched up Ketagalan Boulevard, shouting “UN for Taiwan,” “Peace forever” and “Keep Taiwan Free.”
They presented ministry officials with a petition calling for it to apply for UN membership as Taiwan.
A premarch forum opened with a rendition of Taiwan the Green (台灣翠青) — a Taiwanese Presbyterian Church hymn that has been promoted as Taiwan’s “national anthem” by many independence advocates — followed by a panel criticizing Taiwan’s exclusion from the UN as unreasonable.
Taiwan United Nations Alliance president Liao Lin Li-ling (廖林麗玲) said the recent admission to the UN of Palestine, while Taiwan remains excluded, was disheartening to independence advocates.
Taiwan has made much greater contributions to the world than Palestine, whose government 20 years ago was still listed by the US as a terrorist organization, Lin said.
“Taiwan is a mid-sized country larger than 75 percent of the countries in the UN, yet Taiwan is not in the UN — it should be there,” said Jerome Keating, a retired National Taipei University professor.
He said the official name of Taiwan’s government — the Republic of China — is an obstacle to membership, because there cannot be two Chinas, and called for the name to be changed to “Taiwan” to allow for “one China and one Taiwan.”
“Taiwan is our nation, but Taiwan is not a sovereign state yet; we have to understand this fact,” Free Taiwan Party chairman Tsay Ting-kuei (蔡丁貴) said.
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