The best way to respond to threats from China against Taiwan independence advocates is for the president to publicly reiterate Taiwan’s sovereignty, former minister of national defense Michael Tsai (蔡明憲) said on Sunday.
Chinese media on Nov. 15 said that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was compiling “a list of stubborn Taiwanese separatists and will severely punish them in accordance with [China’s] Anti-Secession Law and hold them accountable for their actions for the rest of their lives.”
Chinese media subsequently accused Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) of being a “first-rate war criminal,” because of his policy on mask exports.
“The vast majority of Taiwanese have no desire for unification with China. They have resolutely expressed that Taiwan is not a part of China,” Tsai said.
He cited President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) as previously saying that “nobody should have to apologize for their political beliefs,” and cited Vice President William Lai (賴清德) as once referring to himself as a “Taiwanese independence worker.”
China compiling such a list would not be of any concern to Taiwanese, and Taiwanese would not cower in the face of Chinese suppression, he said.
What Taiwanese hope for is the normalization of state-to-state relations with China, and the majority hope for Taiwan to become a member of the UN, he said.
The normal course of events is for the Mainland Affairs Council to issue a response whenever China makes threats, but the public is becoming increasingly disgusted with China, he said.
“This list China wants to compile is a violation of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Taiwan is not a part of China — even US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said so,” Michael Tsai said.
He encouraged the president to “make use of her position as head of state to emphasize Taiwan’s history and its position in international law.”
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lai Jui-lung (賴瑞隆) said that the compliation of a list of Taiwan independence advocates would severely damage cross-strait relations.
What people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait hope for is peaceful development and common prosperity, he said, adding that such a scenario would be the most beneficial for both nations.
“If China wants to make a list, we can make a list too — of high-level CCP officials, including those in China’s Taiwan Affairs Office and [Chinese President] Xi Jinping (習近平) himself,” he said.
“Let the world know who is destroying human rights, give them their place in history,” he added.
China’s list of Taiwanese advocates, as well as its recent disqualification of a number of pro-democracy legislators in Hong Kong, might be its way of retaliating against US sanctions imposed on several CCP officials, Taiwan Citizen Front secretary-general Chiang Min-yen (江旻諺) said.
“As long as they [independence advocates] do not visit China they should have little to worry about,” he said. “However, they might be at risk of deportation to China if they visit pro-China countries in Southeast Asia.”
Chiang advised the government to cooperate with like-minded democracies on countermeasures against China.
Meanwhile, Alliance of Referendum for Taiwan convener Tsay Ting-kuei (蔡丁貴) echoed Michael Tsai’s comments, saying that while Tsai Ing-wen might not be able to talk about “Taiwan independence,” she could continue to emphasize that Taiwan is not a part of China.
The government could also consider making public the names of people in Taiwan known to be agents of the CCP.
“The purpose of this would not be to punish those people, but rather to remind the public who among them wants to help the CCP swallow up Taiwan, and to let the CCP know that its agents cannot hide in plain sight,” he said.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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: