Ambassador to Eswatini Thomas Chen (陳經銓) has made significant progress in his recovery from a stroke late last month, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Andrew Lee (李憲章) told a media briefing yesterday.
After being found seriously ill in his Mbabane office on June 22, Chen was transferred to a hospital in South Africa for treatment.
He returned to Eswatini on June 29 and remains hospitalized.
Photo: Lu I-hsuan, Taipei Times
Chen has regained full consciousness and is able to communicate with medical professionals and his family, Lee said.
Chen is the only remaining Taiwanese ambassador in Africa after Burkina Faso severed ties with Taiwan in late May.
As Eswatini is Taiwan’s last African ally, Chen was busy arranging King Mswati III’s state visit to Taiwan on June 6 and President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) trip to Eswatini in April before he became ill.
Chen is not the first Taiwanese envoy to feel pressure to shore up Taiwanese diplomatic relations in the face of Beijing’s aggressive measures to entice African countries with investment and loans before the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) scheduled to take place in Beijing in September.
The ministry previously revealed that then-ambassador to the Dominican Republic Tang Ji-zen (湯繼仁) lost 7kg and was under extreme pressure before China persuaded the Caribbean nation to establish formal ties with Beijing on April 30.
In an interview with CNN at the end of last month, Chen said that he does not lose any sleep over the Taiwan-Eswatini relationship.
King Mswati III has told Taipei that he does not plan to attend the China-Africa summit and reiterated his country’s commitment to Taiwan during his visit, promising to be a friend in “good times and bad times.”
Chen has served as the ambassador to the southern African nation, previously known as Swaziland, since September 2013.
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
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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