The Association of Taiwan Journalists yesterday issued a statement protesting the UN Secretariat’s decision to deny Taiwanese journalists access to next week’s World Health Assembly (WHA), saying it contravened Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare is scheduled to depart at midnight today for the summit, which starts on Monday in Geneva, Switzerland, despite the lack of an official invitation.
The UN Secretariat also refused to grant media accreditation to journalists from Taiwan, without citing a reason for the rejection.
“We protest in the strongest term against the UN’s transgression on the basic rights of Taiwanese journalists and demand full accreditation right to be granted without discrimination. It is absurd that the political agenda of one should be put before the wellbeing of 7 billion people,” the association said in a statement in English.
International Federation of Journalists (IFT) president Phillippe Leruth also called the UN Secretariat’s decision “unacceptable,” the association said, adding that Leruth said that denying journalists access to reporting based on their nationality would open doors to news censorship.
“We welcome his remarks and appreciate him writing to the institutions responsible for the decision to urge them to honor international media’s right to cover the annual event,” the association said.
The group also appealed to a verbal commitment made by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who in May last year said that he would stand up for the right of the poor.
“In the sense that over 23 million people in the absence of his invitation are suffering from deprivation of representation to WHA, Taiwan is the ‘poor.’ Therefore, he [Tedros] should be standing up for their rights, not inflicting more harm by denying their journalists access to reporting,” the group said.
The association urged fellow IFT members to voice their dissatisfaction with the UN’s decision, which fosters disparity of care — something Tedros has described as “utterly unacceptable.”
It also urged the UN to adhere to the principles it claims to uphold.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a non-governmental organization based in France that promotes freedom of the press, on Wednesday issued a similar statement.
“No bona fide journalist should be barred from reporting because of their nationality or the place of registration of the media they work for,” said Cedric Alviani, the head of RSF’s East Asia bureau, in an e-mail to the Central News Agency (CNA).
“The discrimination made by the UN and the WHO against the Taiwanese media clearly contradicts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states the right ‘to receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers,’” Alviani said.
Alviani’s response came one day after an application by two CNA reporters to cover the WHA meeting was rejected.
Additional reporting by CNA
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