Taiwan would not receive an official invitation to Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral on Monday next week due to a lack of official ties with the UK, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
However, the government has expressed its wish to mourn the death of the queen on behalf of its people in other “appropriate ways,” Department of European Affairs Director-General Remus Chen (陳立國) said.
“We are still waiting for an official response from the UK side and will make a public announcement once a final confirmation is made,” Chen said.
Photo: CNA
According to the British government’s guidance, only nations with which the UK has diplomatic relations are invited to pay their respects at the state funeral that is to take place at Westminster Abbey at 11am on Monday.
People in Taiwan began paying their respects to the late monarch at the UK’s representative office in Taipei yesterday by signing a condolence book prepared by the office after the queen’s death on Thursday.
A handful of people, including Taiwanese, Hong Kongers and Britons, waited outside the British Office Taipei before the book was opened for members of the public to sign at about 1pm.
Michael Story, a British national and one of the first visitors to the office to sign the book, told reporters that he wanted to thank the queen for her lifelong service to his country.
Most people in the UK have had some sort of encounter with the queen, so her passing “feels more personal,” Story said.
He first saw the queen when he was 11 or 12, and last saw her at the Royal Windsor Horse Show in May when he returned to the UK to visit his family, he said.
“When you are far away from your home country, something like this, a major national event, tends to affect you perhaps even more than it might when you are at home,” he said.
“All my friends in the UK are attending the [queen’s] funeral or some of the arrangements. Here in Taipei I can come and sign the book,” he added.
A woman surnamed Pang (彭), a Hong Konger who has settled in Taiwan, told reporters that she and two other Hong Kongers signed the book to remember the queen for her contributions to the development of the territory.
“We wanted to write something to pay tribute to the queen’s contributions and devotion throughout her life,” Pang said.
Chen Po-hao (陳柏豪), a Taipei-based sales manager who was first in line to sign the book, said he wrote a message about his gratitude for the queen’s contributions to Hong Kong’s prosperity and world peace.
The book can be signed by the public between 1pm and 4pm until Friday at the office on the 26th floor of President International Tower at No. 9-11 Song Gao Road, the British Office Taipei said.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) is to visit the office to sign the book this week, Chen said.
The royal family has an online book of condolence, available on the royal Web site, www.royal.uk/send-message-condolence, for those who wish to pay their respects virtually, the office said.
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