The Tibetan government-in-exile has appointed Kelsang Gyaltsen Bawa as its representative to Taiwan, it said on Thursday.
On Jan. 4, Gyaltsen, who is the Chinese liaison officer of the Tibet Information Office in Canberra, would replace Dawa Tsering as chairman of the Tibet Religious Foundation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama — the de facto embassy of the exiled Tibetan government in Taiwan, it said in a statement.
Officials from the Tibetan side said that it is a regular personnel change and that Dawa would be assigned new duties after having served six years in the post.
Born in Batang Zong in western Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in China’s Sichuan Province in 1966, Gyaltsen worked at the local United Front Work Department in Garze after graduating from the Sichuan Institute of Socialism, where he majored in Chinese communist united front theory.
Inspired by the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 and later won the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, he left China with five other Tibetans to India in 1999.
He then joined the Dharamsala, India-based Central Tibetan Administration, working for its Ministry of Security, where he was in charge of foreign relations and news information affairs.
Gyaltsen said that he fled China after witnessing the Tibetan revolt against the Chinese Communist Party in Lhasa in 1988 and 1989.
The vast amount of twisted and fabricated reporting by China’s media made him realize that he must fight against the rule of the Chinese communists, he said.
Gyaltsen was elected to the 14th and 15th Tibetan parliaments and moved to Australia in 2016. He was appointed Chinese liaison officer of the Tibet Information Office in Canberra in 2017.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
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