Taiwanese rapper Dwagie (大支) blasts the WHO for excluding Taiwan in the global fight against the COVID-19 outbreak in his latest song released yesterday.
In the song titled WHO, which has with English lyrics, the rapper opens with the line: “Health for all, leaving no one behind,” which is the stated goal of the international organization.
However, the WHO has long excluded Taiwan from participation due to Chinese pressure, even though it is known globally for its medical expertise, he says in the song.
Dwagie criticized the global organization for thinking that “politics matter when human life is on the line.”
The song also accuses China of failing to do its job in preventing the outbreak, instead focusing more on clamping down on the spread of news regarding the virus.
The three-minute song also says that the WHO should change its name to “Winnie Happy Organization,” referring to a satirical comparison between Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and popular children’s cartoon character Winnie the Pooh, whose images have been banned in China.
Dwagie said on Facebook that the song was written to express his view that the enjoyment of health should be a universal right without discrimination based on race, religion, political beliefs or economic or social conditions.
The 35-year-old rapper is known locally for using his music to express his views on controversial issues.
Between 2009 and 2016, Taiwan participated in the annual World Health Assembly, the decisionmaking body of the WHO, as an observer.
However, since 2017, the WHO has not invited Taiwan to the assembly, in line with Beijing’s hardline stance on cross-strait relations since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) of the Democratic Progressive Party took office in May 2016.
A number of governments, including Canada, Japan and the US, have over the past few weeks renewed their support for Taiwan’s inclusion in the assembly as an observer amid the COVID-19 outbreak.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods