The Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission should grant residency to stateless Tibetan refugees, the Taiwan Association for Human Rights said yesterday, also calling for the passage of a refugee act.
“There should be a system in place to determine whether people are stateless or refugees rather than dealing with them on a case-by-case basis. If their identity can be determined, they should be afforded protection,” association secretary-general Chiu E-ling (邱伊翎) said, adding that the current law affords no guarantees to the two groups.
Tibetan rights advocates and association members rallied outside the commission building in Taipei, demanding that residency be granted to 12 stateless Tibetans.
Chiu said the government had treated the 12 as illegal immigrants rather than as refugees or Tibetans in exile, when at least some of them had become trapped in the nation after their Nepalese passports were lost or expired.
There were also cases in which Tibetan’s Taiwanese spouses had divorced them, leaving them without identity papers, she said.
Tsultrim Thahchin — one of the 12 stateless Tibetans — said that some of them were forced to sleep on the streets and were unable to access medical treatment because of their status.
Nepal’s warming relations with China have led to Kathmandu implementing a more rigorous review of passport applications, including a recent declaration that it would not provide travel documents to Tibetan exiles, she said.
Lack of legal status also made them reluctant to report mistreatment in the workplace, he said.
Association office director Yen Szu-yu (顏思妤) said that while an amnesty had previously been granted to Tibetans who overstayed visas without residency rights, a sunset clause prevented those who arrived after 2008 from applying.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
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