Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) on Monday said that Bangkok had yielded to pressure from Beijing after she was barred entry to Thailand earlier this month for the second time in a year.
Lu said the ban is a breach of human rights.
Lu was first barred entry to Thailand in May last year when she traveled there to attend the Istanbul Summit.
Thai authorities at the time said her visa had been “postponed,” Lu said, adding that she was told she could attend subsequent conferences in the country.
Lu said she never expected that she would be denied entry again.
No explanation has been given by the Thai government for the refused entry this time, she added.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it is in discussions with Bangkok about the issue, adding that it hopes to boost cooperation with Thailand that would include allowing Lu to visit.
“To me, there is nothing amazing about Thailand,” Lu said, adding that she is considering whether “to take action against” the country.
“I am welcome in many countries around the world, so I do not really care” about being denied entry to Thailand, she said.
Lu said she hopes that the travel freedoms of Taiwanese will be respected as President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) government moves ahead with its “new southbound policy” — a set of measures aimed at boosting economic ties with India and Southeast Asian nations.
Lu said the Tsai administration has been promoting the policy through various slogans.
However, the government should “do the basics well and take concrete action if Taiwanese travel freedoms are obstructed,” she said.
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:
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