Several exiled Tibetans, accompanied by the Taiwan Association for Human Rights and other groups, held a demonstration in front of the Executive Yuan in Taipei yesterday, protesting that they cannot renew their passports, leave the nation, work or join the National Health Insurance system.
Sobbing and kneeling on the ground, the exiled Tibetans said they are worried that they will not even be able to see a doctor if they get sick and they hope the new government can help solve the problem.
“How long do we have to live this inhuman life,” the exiled Tibetans and members of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, the Union of Excluded Immigrants, the Taiwan Tibetan Welfare Association and other groups chanted.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
In September 2014, a group of exiled Tibetans who have been in Taiwan since 2009 began seeking the help of legislators and the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission to solve the problem that they are unable to renew the passports they used to travel to Taiwan.
According to Article 16 of the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法), the situation of Tibetans who entered Taiwan before the end of 2008 has been solved, but the situation of 17 exiled Tibetans who arrived in Taiwan after that date remains unresolved.
Taiwan Association for Human Rights secretary-general Chiu E-ling (邱伊翎) said the exiled Tibetans have already petitioned the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission on Oct. 28 last year and the commission had agreed to “restart an investigation” into the individual cases, but the problem still remains.
She said the commission is at fault for inertia, so she is fine with the government abolishing the commission, but she wants to know what the Executive Yuan plans to do to deal with the problem.
Exiled Tibetan Chime Dhondup said his life in Taiwan is very hard because he does not have identification and one time he felt really bad because he went to see a doctor about a stomachache, but did not have a National Health Insurance card.
Dhondup knelt on the ground and asked the government to help him.
Yeshi Dolkar, another exiled Tibetan, said he does not dare go and visit a doctor even when he is sick and he is really worried what would happen if he suffers a serious ailment.
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