A decision by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to remove the Republic of China (ROC) flag from a thank-you tweet to countries that offered support in the wake of Friday’s massive earthquake was due to pressure from China, which was regrettable, top officials said yesterday.
While Erdogan did not name the countries and organizations that reached out to Turkey after the magnitude 7 quake on Saturday, he posted pictures of their flags, but the tweet was later taken down and replaced with a new one that did not include the ROC flag.
Turkey maintains diplomatic ties with China.
Photo: Screen grab from Twitter
“According to information obtained by our representative office in Turkey, it was due to China’s meddling and pressure,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) told reporters in front of the Legislative Yuan in Taipei attending a legislative hearing.
He said Taiwan, as a nation that upholds human rights, would continue to provide humanitarian assistance to other countries that need help, such as the Philippines and Vietnam after recent devastating typhoons.
“We condemn China’s regrettable intervention and repression on a matter of humanitarian assistance that has no political implications,” Wu said.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said the issue showed that the Chinese government was “narrow-minded,” as it was normal for a country to express appreciation to others that offer support in times of crisis.
“What China did was try to restrict Taiwan’s international space,” Su said on the sidelines of a ceremony to commend government agencies providing open data.
In the face of such repression, Taiwanese should realize that Taiwan can only hold its place in the international community by standing on its own feet, he said.
The overall death toll from Friday’s quake reached 87 yesterday, after search-and-rescue teams found more bodies amid toppled buildings in Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city.
Close to 1,000 people were injured, mostly in Turkey, by the quake, which was centered in the Aegean Sea northeast of the Greek island of Samos.
The tremors were felt across western Turkey, as well as in the Greek capital, Athens. Hundreds of aftershocks have followed.
In other developments, the Ministry of National Defense said that Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft yesterday entered Taiwan’s southwest air defense identification zone on eight separate occasions, the 32nd day such incursions have occurred since the middle of September.
The Chinese aircraft involved were one Y-8 marine patrol plane, one Y-8 tactical reconnaissance aircraft, two Su-30 jets, two J-16 fighters and two J-10 jets, the defense ministry said.
The air force scrambled planes to monitor the Chinese aircraft, issuing radio warnings and mobilizing air defense assets before the Chinese planes left the air defense identification zone, it said.
It was the ninth consecutive day of incursions and the 32nd day on which such incursions have taken place since Sept. 16, a day before the defense ministry began regularly publishing details of Chinese military movements on its Web site.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS