US Senator Ted Cruz is soon to propose a bill that would reverse a ban on Taiwanese diplomats and military personnel displaying Taiwan’s national flag on US government property.
“Cruz is working on legislation with his colleagues that would allow diplomats and service members in the Taiwanese military to display their flag and wear their uniforms while in the US on official business,” a spokesman for the US senator said on Monday. “It’s important for the US and the rest of the world to stand alongside Taiwan and refuse to be bullied by the Chinese Communist Party.”
The comments were made in response to a Central News Agency (CNA) inquiry, after a former US senior advisor to the Trump administration, Christian Whiton, said on Friday that Cruz is drafting legislation to get rid of some US restrictions on Taiwan under its “one China” policy.
A source familiar with the matter told CNA that the bill titled The Taiwan Symbols of Sovereignty Act, or Taiwan SOS Act, would direct the US Department of State and the Department of Defense to authorize diplomats and military members from Taiwan to display their national flag at US government venues.
In effect, it directs the US Department of State to remove US government guidelines from 2015 that prohibit all symbols of Taiwan sovereignty from being displayed on US premises, the source said.
The guidelines are considered confidential administration policy that cannot be provided to the US Congress, but can be seen by congressional staffers on a read-and-return basis with a US Department of State employee present, the source said.
The policy has been interpreted by the US Department of Defense to include military uniforms that include Taiwan’s flag or the name “Republic of China.”
The 2015 guidelines stemmed from an incident in January of that year when Taiwan’s representative office in the US raised Taiwan’s flag at Twin Oaks Estate, the former residence of Taiwanese ambassadors to the US. The flag-raising ceremony was the first one held in public since Taiwan and the US ended official diplomatic relations in 1979.
Facing strong protests from the Chinese embassy, the administration of former US president Barack Obama released the guidelines to forbid Taiwanese diplomats from entering US Department of State facilities, prohibit the raising of Taiwan’s flag at Twin Oaks and restrict any display of the flag on US government property, the source said.
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
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
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