A group of activists draped in Tibetan flags cycled through Taipei’s streets yesterday to promote awareness of Chinese human rights abuses.
A group of about 10 members of the Human Rights Network for Tibet and Taiwan and other activist groups set off yesterday morning from the 228 Memorial Park, braving rain and chilly temperatures as they rode by the National Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial, the Legislative Yuan and the Kelti Building, which houses Chinese representative offices, on their way to Taipei 101.
“Tibet for the Tibetans. Free Tibet,” group members shouted at a press conference at the Liberty Square in front of the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial, promising to ride Taipei’s streets every Wednesday morning for the next several months in the run-up to Tibetan Uprising Day events on March 10, which marks the anniversary of a 1959 revolt against Chinese rule that led to the Dalai Lama fleeing to India.
“While the world has changed a lot, nothing has changed in Tibet, where even basic human rights are lacking,” Cycling for a Free Tibet initiator Tashi Tsering said. “We hope to represent the 6 million people of Tibet who cannot speak for themselves and help more people to understand the extreme oppression in Tibet.”
Cycling was chosen to symbolize the “cycling” of reincarnation that is central to Tibetan Buddhist cosmology, as well as how exiled Tibetans have had to shuttle from country to country, he said.
With the exception of Tashi, most of the other cyclists were Taiwanese human rights advocates who cited similarities between the plight of Tibet and Taiwan as the reason for their participation.
“Every minute of every day, we have to face the problem of democratic self-determination versus China, so self-determination is something very close to our hearts,” Covenants and Conventions Watch convener Huang Song-lih (黃嵩立) said.
Taiwan Human Rights Association secretary-general Chiu E-ling (邱伊翎) called for the newly elected legislature to amend the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法) and pass an “asylum act” to allow exiled Tibetans to be granted residency, also calling for new legislators to participate in the Tibetan Human Rights Caucus.
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