Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) office yesterday shrugged off criticism directed at Ma over the advice he recently issued on safeguarding the nation’s sovereignty over Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島), saying Ma had already endeavored to implement most of the suggestions while he was in office.
“Itu Aba had been free of crises until the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, the Netherlands, ruled on Tuesday last week that Itu Aba was merely a ‘rock’ rather than an ‘island,’” Ma’s office said, adding that Ma had acted on the majority of the suggestions he listed in a recent opinion editorial and only hoped that they would be continued in the future.
The office made the remarks after Ma offered 10 pieces of advice to President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on “ways to uphold Taiwan’s rights in the South China Sea and the status of Itu Aba” in an opinion editorial published by the Chinese-language United Daily News on Saturday.
Among the 10 suggestions, Ma said the Ministry of the Interior should map and make public Itu Aba’s base point, baseline, contiguous zone, territorial waters and 200 nautical mile (370.4km) exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
Pan-green lawmakers have questioned why Ma, who spent most of his final months in office defending the legal status of Itu Aba, did not carry out the suggestions while he was still president and chose to “offer counsel” to Tsai after stepping down from the presidency.
The office said the ministry has been mapping the Republic of China’s (ROC) territorial sea baseline, territorial waters and contiguous zone since 1999, but it has yet to include the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島).
“However, the situation is different now and our continued exclusion of the Spratly Islands on such a map could send a misleading signal that the ROC knows that justice is not on its side or that it does not attach importance to the matter,” the office said.
At a time when the tribunal’s ruling could lead the Philippines to perceive the waters between Itu Aba and Palawan Island as its own EEZ, it is all the more necessary for the ROC to map and make public Itu Aba’s base point and baseline to safeguard the nation’s interests, the office said.
There would not have been an urgency for the publication of such a map were it not for the “Itu Aba crisis” this time, the office said, adding that different actions should be taken in response to the new situation in the South China Sea.
Ma visited the island in January in an attempt to refute the Philippines’ claims that Itu Abu is merely a “rock,” because of its inability to sustain human habitation, and therefore is not entitled to a 200 nautical mile EEZ.
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