It was very upsetting to hear President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) shameless comments about the World Health Assembly (WHA) during the recent presidential debate on TV.
In May, before the WHA meeting, legislators released internal WHO documents about Taiwan having to be listed as a province of China when it takes part in WHA events as an observer.
Following the release of this information, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it did not know about this crucial decision that was so detrimental to Taiwan’s presence in the international community.
Then, Ma and Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) held a top meeting of the National Security Council in which they both solemnly promised that a protest would be filed by government officials with the WHO in Geneva.
Before the Geneva trip, a press conference was held in which everyone was filled with righteous indignation, but then when the officials got to the WHO headquarters, they kept quiet. It was all just playing to the gallery.
Not long after this, several members of the EU parliament and the US Congress, as well as US Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, became fed up with the stalling, so they asked the WHO on Taiwan’s behalf.
In September, they received a reply confirming that what Ma had proclaimed to be “observer” status was tantamount to national humiliation and the abandonment of Taiwan’s sovereignty. Now, half a year has gone by and the Ma government has done nothing at all to right this wrong for the nation.
To allow Taiwan to participate in the WHO, starting in 1997, former Academia Sinica member Lee Chen-yuan (李鎮源) led Taiwan’s medical sector in investing time and money every year on visits to countries around the world to lobby for Taiwanese WHO membership. These actions gradually helped win the support of international bodies such as the World Medical Association.
After more than a decade, they had pushed Taiwan’s participation in the WHO to the point where it became part of an international consensus and large countries, such as the US, Japan and the EU, started to show their support.
The purpose of this was to bring about an opportunity for practical participation in the WHO both for the sake of Taiwan’s medical sector and for all Taiwanese.
Since Ma came into office in 2008, he has held private talks with the Chinese government and worked with Beijing to get Taiwan “the chance” to take part in the annual five-day WHA meeting in an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of Taiwanese.
However, internationally, the Ma government has given tacit agreement to and accepted China’s proclamations of sovereignty over Taiwan and has gone along with China and the WHA memorandum of understanding, doing everything it has been asked to do.
In the beginning, the Ma government said it would continue to try its best to participate in technical meetings at the WHO, but when I recently got in touch with friends who are also senior WHO officials, I was shocked and angered to learn that, for the past three years, Taiwan has not tried to participate in any WHO events, nor had they seen or heard of any requests from Taiwan to be allowed to it participate in technical meetings at the organization.
In the past, there was a lot of hard work done to get large countries to lobby for Taiwan’s participation in regional meetings of the WHO or sit in on the meetings of the organization’s Executive Board, but in recent years, it has not received any official letters or requests for Taiwan’s participation.
Quite simply, the WHO does not know what Taiwan wants and seems to think Taiwan will be satisfied with taking part in one five-day conference each year.
In his efforts to please China, Ma has sacrificed Taiwanese’s basic human right to medical care and Taiwan’s right to participate in the international community.
He has also ruined the excellent quality of Taiwan’s medical community and its international reputation.
The way Ma and Beijing have joined hands to destroy all the hard-earned ground made by Taiwan’s medical community in gaining participation in international and medical health affairs is deeply upsetting.
Peter Chang is a doctor and formerly served as a representative for the Department of Health.
Translated by Drew Cameron
In a stark reminder of China’s persistent territorial overreach, Pema Wangjom Thongdok, a woman from Arunachal Pradesh holding an Indian passport, was detained for 18 hours at Shanghai Pudong Airport on Nov. 24 last year. Chinese immigration officials allegedly informed her that her passport was “invalid” because she was “Chinese,” refusing to recognize her Indian citizenship and claiming Arunachal Pradesh as part of South Tibet. Officials had insisted that Thongdok, an Indian-origin UK resident traveling for a conference, was not Indian despite her valid documents. India lodged a strong diplomatic protest, summoning the Chinese charge d’affaires in Delhi and demanding
With the Year of the Snake reaching its conclusion on Monday next week, now is an opportune moment to reflect on the past year — a year marked by institutional strain and national resilience. For Taiwan, the Year of the Snake was a composite of political friction, economic momentum, social unease and strategic consolidation. In the political sphere, it was defined less by legislative productivity and more by partisan confrontation. The mass recall movement sought to remove 31 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators following the passage of controversial bills that expanded legislative powers and imposed sweeping budget cuts. While the effort
When Hong Kong’s High Court sentenced newspaper owner Jimmy Lai (黎智英) to 20 years in prison this week, officials declared that his “heinous crimes” had long poisoned society and that his punishment represented justice restored. In their telling, Lai is the mastermind of Hong Kong’s unrest — the architect of a vast conspiracy that manipulated an otherwise contented population into defiance. They imply that removing him would lead to the return of stability. It is a politically convenient narrative — and a profoundly false one. Lai did not radicalize Hong Kong. He belonged to the same generation that fled from the Chinese
There is a story in India about a boy called Prahlad who was an ardent worshipper of Lord Narayana, whom his father considered an enemy. His son’s devotion vexed the father to the extent that he asked his sister, Holika, who could not be burned by fire, to sit with the boy in her lap and burn him to death. Prahlad knew about this evil plan, but sat in his aunt’s lap anyway. His faith won, as he remained unscathed by the fire, while his aunt was devoured by the flames. In some small way, Prahlad reminds me of Taiwan
RSS