Pan-green lawmakers yesterday asked why former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) did not implement suggestions he made of ways to uphold the nation’s sovereignty over Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島) while he was president.
At a news conference on Thursday, Ma said that as he is no longer in office, he would refrain from talking too much about the issue of the South China Sea, instead urging patience from the public as the new government acts to safeguard national sovereignty, adding that it needs time and space to do so effectively.
However, Ma yesterday listed 10 suggestions to protect sovereignty over Itu Aba in a letter published by the Chinese-language United Daily News.
On July 12, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, the Netherlands, ruled that high-tide features of the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島), including Itu Aba, are “rocks” rather than “islands” and therefore not entitled to 200 nautical mile (370.4km) exclusive economic zones.
“While Ma was in office he would have taken many things into consideration to hinder announcing maritime territorial claims,” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said. “Why now, after he has stepped down from the presidency, would he attempt to guide others in doing that which he himself could not accomplish?”
Chen said that a first installment of Republic of China (ROC) marine territorial claims did not include Itu Aba or even Kinmen and Matsu, while in November 2009, then-minister of the interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) promised to announce a second installment of territorial claims, but that was delayed after a dispute with Japan in September 2012 over the Diaoyutais (釣魚台).
Chen asked whether the delays and continued claims to the Diaoyutais were demonstrations of hostility toward Japan by the then-Ma administration to appease China.
New Power Party caucus convener Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said that “if Ma truly has good intentions, he should admit his failures and reflect quietly on his term.”
Hsu said that Ma’s devotion to “one China” means that his interests in the benefits of the nation are implied to be the benefits of “one China.”
Hsu said that in the face of the ruling in The Hague regarding China’s “nine-dash line” South China Sea claims, Ma’s discourse is outdated and should be discarded.
To persist with Ma’s approach would be to tie Taiwan’s fate in the South China Sea to that of China and make the nation look like a regional troublemaker, Hsu said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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