The government yesterday said that it supports the Vatican’s ongoing efforts to engage in dialogue with China in an attempt to improve the country’s “deteriorating religious freedom and human rights,” but also warned that Pope Francis’ recent trip to Mongolia suggests there is a long way to go before improvement is seen.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Jeff Liu (劉永健) made the remarks when asked by reporters to comment on the pope’s four-day visit to Mongolia, which concluded on Monday.
During his first-ever visit to the Asian country, the pope sent a telegram of greeting to President Xi Jinping (習近平) as his aircraft flew through Chinese airspace early on Friday, as per Vatican tradition.
Photo: Reuters
At the end of a mass on Sunday in Mongolia, the pope again sent greetings to China, calling its citizens a “noble” people and asking Catholics in China to be “good Christians and good citizens.”
On Monday, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it has a positive attitude toward improving relations with the Vatican.
Asked to comment yesterday on the exchanges between the Vatican and Beijing, Liu said that as a country that upholds freedom of religion and protects human rights, Taiwan has always supported the Holy See in its attempts to talk to China to resolve their disputes over religious issues.
“We support the Vatican’s efforts to improve China’s deteriorating religious freedom and human rights issues with increased exchanges, and the ultimate goal of fulfilling religious freedom in China,” Liu told reporters at a news briefing.
However, Liu said foreign media have reported that China did not permit any bishops from the country to attend the papal visit in Mongolia.
Also, media reported that most of the Chinese Catholics who saw the pope in Mongolia wore medical masks, with some also wearing sunglasses and scarves, apparently to prevent them being identified by the Chinese government, Liu said.
“This shows that the Chinese government’s United Front Work Department [which manages religious affairs] is standing between the Chinese people and the pope, and that the country as a whole is standing between the people and religion,” he said, adding that there appears to be many obstacles to religious freedom in China.
Taiwan would continue to work closely with the Holy See to promote humanitarian assistance around the world and safeguard religious freedom, while at the same time deepening a decades-long friendship between the two sides based on shared values, Liu added.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS