Former ambassador to Nicaragua Jaime Wu (吳進木) had not informed the government of his decision to accept Nicaraguan citizenship, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday, urging Wu to respond to public queries about his continued stay in the country despite the severance of diplomatic ties.
The Nicaraguan government on Dec. 9 switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. The following day it announced that Wu and his wife, Liu Chun-chiao (劉春嬌), were granted Nicaraguan citizenship in recognition of their contributions to the country for more than a decade.
While Wu had officially applied for retirement before the two nations cut ties, his decision to stay in the country has sparked controversy.
Photo taken from the Web site of the Republic of China embassy in Nicaragua
Wu had since 2020 applied for retirement several times and his application was approved on Sept. 28 last year, ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou (歐江安) told a news briefing in Taipei yesterday.
However, the ministry had not been informed of his decision to receive Nicaraguan citizenship in advance, she said.
Wu had told the ministry that his wife could not travel long distances due to health issues, so the couple could not return to Taiwan for the time being, she said, adding that the ministry would not comment further on Liu’s health condition.
The ministry has contacted Wu through private channels and called on him to respond to public questions, she said.
Wu is still subject to the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), Ou said.
The ministry is holding interagency discussions regarding calls to amend the law to prevent a similar incident, Ou said.
As a former diplomat, Wu should have striven for the greater good of the nation, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) said separately in a video on Facebook yesterday.
However, his actions, including accepting Nicaraguan citizenship and staying in the Central American country after it cut ties with Taiwan, show that he has no professional ethics at all, which should be condemned by the public, Wang said.
It is questionable whether Wu did his utmost to protect the nation’s benefits and secrets during his tenure as a diplomat, he added.
The authorities should discuss whether to freeze Wu’s pension or take legal action, Wang said, urging Wu to return to Taiwan and explain his actions to the public.
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
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
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