The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued a stern protest over the WHO’s decision to deny Taiwanese news outlets access to the World Health Assembly (WHA), the annual meeting of its decisionmaking body that opened yesterday in Geneva, Switzerland, calling on the WHO to respect press freedom.
The ministry issued a statement protesting and condemning the UN body’s decision not to grant media accreditation to journalists from Taiwan.
It also called on WHO member countries and international media to demand that the WHO respect and protect press freedom, adding that the organization is serving China’s political objectives by depriving Taiwanese journalists of their right to cover news.
Photo: CNA
It is the second year in a row that Taiwan has failed to obtain an invitation to the WHA due to China’s obstruction, the ministry said.
Due to Taiwan’s exclusion from the global health network, Taiwan was unable to acquire timely disease information during the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, which cost dozens of lives, the ministry said.
The WHO, as the world’s leading health organization, should safeguard the right to health of all human beings, including by providing access to health information, the ministry said, adding that the WHO’s refusal to accredit Taiwanese reporters amounts to a serious violation of the universal human rights enshrined in the UN Charter.
The ministry said it would continue to solicit support from Taiwan’s diplomatic allies and countries friendly to Taiwan, asking them to lodge protests with the WHO and demand that it not cave in to political pressure from China.
Last week, US non-governmental organization Freedom House also weighed in on the issue of accreditation refusal.
Arch Puddington, a fellow at the organization, said the WHO’s decision was “the latest in a series of capitulations by international agencies and private businesses to China’s censorship requirements.”
International Federation of Journalists president Philippe Leruth on Tuesday last week said that the decision was “unacceptable.”
He said he would write to the institutions responsible for the decision and urge them to honor the right of international media to cover the annual event.
Taiwan started seeking an invitation to the WHA in 1997 and was finally invited as an observer in 2009 when Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was president.
The nation was able to attend the WHA every year from 2009 to 2016, but since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office in May 2016, Beijing has blocked the WHA from extending an invitation to Taiwan last year and this year.
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