Taiwan United Nations Alliance members yesterday rallied in Tokyo to call for Taiwan’s participation in the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 under the name “Taiwan,” as part of their “name rectification campaign” and Taiwanization efforts.
After a meeting with Taiwan’s Deputy Representative to Japan Kuo Chung-shi (郭仲熙) at the alliance’s Tokyo chapter, alliance members staged a parade calling for the name of Taiwan’s national sports team to be changed from “Chinese Taipei” to “Taiwan.”
The alliance would meet with Japanese lawmakers and local think tanks to lobby for its cause, it said.
Photo: CNA
Alliance director Michael Tsai (蔡明憲) expressed gratitude for the support of Japanese, as more than 60,000 had signed a petition calling for Taiwan’s participation in the Tokyo Olympics under the name “Taiwan.”
“It was expected that China would tighten its grip on Taiwan after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) took office, which would suppress Taiwan’s international presence and its bid to join the UN,” Tsai said.
“However, if we give up the effort, we would be doing wrong to future generations,” he said.
Taiwan has never been a part of China and when the Republic of China was a formal member of the UN, the membership did not include Taiwan, he said.
“The government cannot act against the public. It cannot be interfered with if Taiwanese vote in a referendum to join the UN under the name of ‘Taiwan,’” he said.
Alliance Tokyo chapter director Kinyu Takamoto said President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration was not committed to attaining UN membership.
Overseas Taiwanese would contribute to the cause, but the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration has to be more aggressive, Takamoto said.
The alliance’s Tokyo chapter, its first overseas branch, was established 10 years ago when the then-DPP administration was preparing to initiate a referendum on UN membership application, the alliance said.
The rally prompted a scathing report by China’s state-run People’s Daily, which insisted on the “one China” principle over the campaigners’ efforts to convince authorities to drop the name “Chinese Taipei.”
“It is this aggression and unreasonableness, and Beijing’s suppression of Taiwan’s international participation that drives Taiwanese away from China,” alliance spokesman Tseng Tsung-kai (曾琮愷) said.
The alliance would continue to campaign for the cause and help the government do what is considered politically sensitive for a government, Tseng said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods