Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lee (李大維) has urged the UN not to forget the 23 million people of Taiwan.
According to the Taipei Representative Office in the EU and Belgium, Le Soir, Belgium’s biggest French-language newspaper, on Wednesday published an article by Lee titled “Taiwan, a Valuable Partner for SDGs — True Universality,” referring to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The UN’s headquarters embodies diversity, equality and freedom, but such symbolic imagery is fading as more Taiwanese are prevented from entering it, the article said.
While Taiwan has signed visa-free travel agreements with 165 countries and territories and has won the respect of many in the fields of business and education, its citizens remain banned from entering UN headquarters, it added.
These restrictions are aimed directly at Taiwan and have even been extended to barring Taiwanese reporters from covering news at the UN, the article said.
Philippine newspapers the Manila Times, the Manila Standard, Malaya, Tonite and the People’s Journal published a total of seven articles by Lee from Friday last week to Monday, in which he reiterated that Taiwan is an important partner in the SDGs and called on the UN to not reject Taiwan to realize the principle of true universality.
On Wednesday, one of Burkina Faso’s biggest media outlets, French-language newspaper Sidwaya, published an article by Lee, in which he said that Taiwan has provided US$6 billion in global medical aid since 1996, but was excluded from the WHO’s World Health Assembly in May.
Many lives were lost in 2003 to SARS due to the WHO’s lack of communication with Taiwan, he added.
Taiwan compares well with any nation in terms of human rights and equality, and performs better than many, Lee said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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