Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Ching-yi (林靜儀) yesterday criticized the Joint Commission of Taiwan for attending a conference in China and allowing the organizer to change the group’s nationality to the “Taiwan area.”
The organization, formerly the Taiwan Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation, is to attend next month’s First National Hospital Accreditation Forum and the Fourth International Forum on Hospital Evaluation and Quality Promotion held by China’s National Institute of Hospital Administration in Hubei Province’s Wuhan, Lin said.
The forum’s official release listed the commission as a co-organizer from the domestic “Taiwan area” she said, adding that the organization knows Taiwan’s sovereignty is being dwarfed, but it still “sticks its hot face to China’s cold butt.”
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
The commission said it has been invited to attend the annual forum since 2015, but it was listed as a “supporter” in 2016 and last year, Lin said, adding that the forum’s documents used the phrases “some of our nation’s provinces and the Taiwan area” and “our nation’s Taiwan area.”
About 85 percent of the organization’s funding is from bidding on government projects and 14 percent is from government subsidies, so the majority of the organization’s budget is public money, DPP Legislator Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said.
Even though the group encourages nonpolitical communication and professional exchanges with China, it is still considered a semi-governmental organization, so it should not use government subsidies to attend a forum that belittles the nation’s sovereignty, she said.
The commission also received a subsidy of about NT$100,000 from a Ministry of Health and Welfare project for promoting linkages with and developing the healthcare industry in nations targeted by the New Southbound Policy, but attending a forum in China should not be considered “southbound,” Lin said.
DPP Legislator Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) said he cannot accept that the organization has attended the forum three years in a row and is still so politically insensitive.
The commission should not become a tool of China’s “united front” tactics, Lee said, adding that he plans to propose revoking the organization’s funds to attend the forum.
“You have been taken advantage of for three consecutive years — why do you want to go a fourth time?” Lin asked.
The commission has been careful about terminology and has tried to maintain the nation’s dignity, but the press releases issued by the organizer after the forum did not need the organization’s approval, commission deputy chief executive Huang Chung-yi (黃仲毅) said.
The organization would conform to the government’s policy and try to connect with more southbound nations, Huang added.
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
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,