Publicity was hindering efforts by a delegation from Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) to carry out the original purpose of their visit to Taiwan's disaster areas: to help Taiwanese people help themselves, the head of the delegation has said.
The delegation, which arrived on Monday from MSF's office in Japan and is to leave today, originally intended to help a group of three art professors -- Chen Ying-wei (
Yang, Chen and Tsai, who were also involved in organizing an MSF photography exhibition in Taiwan three years ago, traveled to Tokyo shortly after the 921 earthquake to ask the organization to assist in Taiwan's quake relief efforts.
PHOTO: FILE
MSF, which had already conducted a field study following the quake, decided that emergency medical response was not a high priority. They recommended instead that long-term, locally-based programs for those displaced by the earthquake were implemeted.
"When they [Yang, Chen and Tsai] came to Japan, they asked what we could do. We said, `not much -- if you want to do something, help yourself,'" said the delegation's leader, Dominique Leguiller, who also heads up the organization's operations in East Asia.
Before the visit was scheduled to begin, Leguiller said he expressly asked the organizers not to invite the media along.
"I told them a week ago in a fax that I did not want to have any media involved," Leguiller said Tuesday night while staying in a temporary encampment at Tungshih Technical High School.
Not only was the group met with TV cameras at the airport and ushered to a press conference the morning after they arrived, they were taken to visit the first set of disaster areas in a caravan of jeeps which were marked with the MSF's name, the fact that they had won the Nobel Prize, and name of the trip's sponsors, Huafan University(
"When I arrived at the airport, I was told that I was going to meet your president [Lee Teng-hui] on Thursday," Leguiller said. "I will meet with him, but you know, I have to go to China on Friday."
The group, which consisted of Leguiller, press officer Daisuke Imajo (
At the end of its first day of visits, the group requested changes to the itinerary that would give them more time at disaster sites and with the three students who were accompanying the delegation. The group's name was also removed from the cars, although not at MSF request, and only half of the original entourage was allowed to accompany the delegates to disaster sites.
"You're going to have to make a decision," Leguiller told the entourage of 20, which included three of Yang's students, representatives from the Kaohsiung City government, the event organizers, and a few local reporters. "Are you going to participate [in quake relief] or are you going to stay in Taipei watching TV?"
Other misunderstandings have dogged the trip. On a bulletin board at the Tungshih encampment's command center, a sign told residents that those in need of psychological counselling could arrange to meet with MSF doctors during their stay. But Leguiller, Imajo and Sekiguchi are all administrators.
Leguiller acknowledges that following the Nobel Prize announcement last Friday, the visit, which had already been planned for weeks, has taken on new significance.
But he said the attention paid to publicity threatened their ability to visit disaster areas and help Yang, Tsai and Chen's students gain a better understanding of emergency relief.
"This is a working trip, not an official trip -- and not a media trip," he said. "I don't want to see 40 TV cameras at the next place we visit ? We need to find something for these students to do."
And while Leguiller acknowledges that MSF "needs the media" to call attention to people's needs, he has not lost sight of the real mission: "When we found out about the Nobel Prize, our thoughts were for the people we were working for, not the people we were working with," he said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS