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.
‘GOOD SIGN’: Thanks to public efforts, the number of COVID-19 cases is on a downward trend, the minister of health said, but told people not to let their guard down The COVID-19 situation appears to be relatively stable and on a downward trend, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said yesterday, as he reported 185 domestic COVID-19 cases and 15 deaths. “This seems to be a relatively good sign,” Chen, who heads the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC), told a daily news briefing. In Taipei and New Taipei City, the overall situation seems to be heading in a good direction, he added. He attributed it to public efforts to control the spread of the virus, but warned people against letting their guard down. Of the new local cases, 83 are males and
PHASE 2: The firm’s CEO said that the results were good and the experimental vaccine safe, but added that hoped-for phase 3 trials would be expensive Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp (高端疫苗) yesterday reported positive results from an interim analysis of phase 2 trials for its COVID-19 vaccine, saying that the vaccine demonstrated high seroconversion rates and geometric mean titer (GMT) figures. A seroconversion rate is the percentage of participants in a trial displaying virus-specific immune memory after being given a vaccine, while the GMT measures the level of neutralizing antibody response, Medigen said. The experimental vaccine has a seroconversion rate of 99.8 percent and its GMT was 662 among the participants aged 20 to 89, while the gauges rose to 99.9 percent and 733 respectively in participants aged
ROLLING OUT DOSES: The expansion aims to speed up Taiwan’s vaccination drive by making more Moderna jabs available to workers at hospitals, the CECC said The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday expanded the eligibility for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to all healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers in the highest vaccine priority group. The center said that 75,000 doses of the vaccine — half of the first batch Taiwan has received — were on Wednesday distributed to hospitals across the nation with specialized COVID-19 rooms, negative pressure wards and testing services. Thus far, they had only been offered to frontline healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers at the designated hospitals, it said. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said that the eligibility was
The EU is set to lift travel restrictions for US and Taiwanese residents as soon as this week, in the latest step toward a return to normal, despite concerns over the spread of potentially dangerous COVID-19 variants. Portugal, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU, proposed adding Taiwan, the US, Albania, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Macau, the Republic of Northern Macedonia, Saudi Arabia and Serbia to a so-called “white list” of countries from which non-essential travel to the bloc is allowed, a diplomat familiar with the matter said. Assuming no objections, EU government envoys in Brussels would today approve the expanded
RSS