The Taiwan United Nations Alliance yesterday said that it is considering launching a petition for a referendum proposal to have the nation join the UN under the name “Taiwan.”
Alliance chairman Twu Shiing-jer (涂醒哲) was joined at a news conference in Taipei by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Huang Hsiu-fang (黃秀芳) and leaders of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan and civic organizations.
They said that it is the right time for a petition because Taiwan’s visibility on the world stage has increased, as it has been praised for its success in containing its COVID-19 outbreak and for helping other countries by sharing its medical expertise and donating masks.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
The alliance has adopted the slogan “Taiwan for the UN, the UN for Taiwan” and is communicating with other civic organizations to hold a referendum next year to show the world that joining the UN is the consensus among a vast majority of Taiwanese, Twu said.
Taiwan’s profile has been heightened and it has been receiving support from the international community, Huang said, citing visits by senior officials from Japan and the US in the past few months, which he said put Taiwan in the international media limelight.
“It is the wish of all Taiwanese to join the UN under the name ‘Taiwan,’” Huang said, urging opposition parties to set aside their political differences to “unite in one voice” for the world to hear the nation’s aspiration to become a member of the UN.
The majority of people agree to using the name “Taiwan,” the alliance said.
“In a recent public survey released this month by the Taiwan Thinktank, 86 percent of people chose to identify as Taiwanese when only one choice could be selected, while only 2 percent identified as Chinese,” it said in a release.
“It is clear that for the vast majority of people, Taiwan is for Taiwanese, and we are not a province of China. The voices of society are saying that Taiwan and China are separate countries across the Taiwan Strait,” it said.
Twu also denounced the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) for launching a referendum proposal in 2008 to have the nation rejoin the UN and other international organizations under the name Republic of China (ROC).
“It was a way for the KMT and Ma to collude with the Chinese Communist Party to block Taiwanese’s path toward forming an independent nation,” he said.
“The KMT promoting the ROC to join the UN was a betrayal of all people in Taiwan, and ran contrary to prevailing public sentiment,” the alliance said.
At the time, the DPP had proposed a referendum to join the UN as “Taiwan,” while the KMT’s proposal sought to rejoin under the name “ROC” or any other “practical” title that would uphold the nation’s dignity. Neither proposal was passed, as voter turnout failed to reach 50 percent.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching