The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday dismissed allegations that the Swiss government has changed details on driver’s licenses issued to Taiwanese nationals from “Taiwan” to “China” since last month, saying there is no such policy.
“After verification with the Representative Office of Taiwan in Bern, Switzerland, we are certain that there is no policy to list Taiwanese citizens’ home nation as ‘China’ on driver’s licenses issued to Taiwanese by the Swiss government,” ministry spokesman Andrew Lee (李憲章) said in a statement yesterday.
Lee said that since a reciprocal driver’s license agreement between Taipei and Bern took effect on Aug. 1, 2007, licenses issued by Switzerland to Taiwanese have always listed their home nation as “TWN” or Taiwan.
The ministry’s remarks were in response to claims made on Facebook earlier this week by a Taiwanese woman based in Switzerland, surnamed Tsai (蔡), who said a staff member at a motor registry office in Zurich informed her of the policy change in late January when she applied for a driver’s license.
“Motor registry staff told me that the office recently received a letter from Beijing [requesting the change] and that from February, all Swiss driver’s licenses issued to Taiwanese nationals would list their home nation as ‘China,’” Tsai wrote on Facebook.
The staff member said Tsai was “lucky” to have applied for her license before the change, Tsai said.
Tsai made the claims after reports that the Swedish Tax Agency on Monday changed the designation for Taiwan from “Taiwan ROC [Republic of China]” to “Taiwan, Province of China” in accordance with the International Organization for Standardization standard 3166.
The designation change prompted a Taiwanese resident of Sweden to launch a petition to urge the Swedish government to remove the “offensive term.”
“Swedish authorities take this ‘administrative measure’ without any regard for the consequences for affected individuals, by directly or indirectly serving the interests of the People’s Republic of China,” said the petition, which had collected more than 14,000 signatures as of press time last night.
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