The US journalists' group the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) on Friday protested the UN Geneva Office's recent decision to deny Taiwanese reporters access to cover the annual meeting of the World Health Assembly (WHA) being held in Geneva this week.
In a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the group's president, Irwin Gratz, said the UN's new requirement that reporters must be passport holders of UN member states in order to be issued passes to cover UN activities violates Article 19 of the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights which guarantees the right of everyone to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.
The SPJ urged the UN to restore its original policy of issuing press passes to any organization or reporter regardless of their country of origin.
The SPJ, founded in 1909 in Indianapolis, Indiana, is the US' most broad-based organization of journalists and is dedicated to promoting freedom of the press.
The letter was the latest protests by an international press group in support of Taiwanese journalists' right to cover the WHA meeting. The International Federation of Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and the International Society for Human Rights have voiced similar protests.
Taiwanese reporters flocked to Geneva to cover the country's bid to join the WHA as an observer but were turned away by the UN Geneva Office on the grounds that Taiwan is not a UN member.
Tropical Storm Usagi strengthened to a typhoon yesterday morning and remains on track to brush past southeastern Taiwan from tomorrow to Sunday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was approximately 950km east-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost point, the CWA said. It is expected to enter the Bashi Channel and then turn north, moving into waters southeast of Taiwan, it said. The agency said it could issue a sea warning in the early hours of today and a land warning in the afternoon. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was moving at
UPDATED FORECAST: The warning covered areas of Pingtung County and Hengchun Peninsula, while a sea warning covering the southern Taiwan Strait was amended The Central Weather Administration (CWA) at 5:30pm yesterday issued a land warning for Typhoon Usagi as the storm approached Taiwan from the south after passing over the Philippines. As of 5pm, Usagi was 420km south-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost tip, with an average radius of 150km, the CWA said. The land warning covered areas of Pingtung County and the Hengchun Peninsula (恆春), and came with an amended sea warning, updating a warning issued yesterday morning to cover the southern part of the Taiwan Strait. No local governments had announced any class or office closures as of press time last night. The typhoon
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
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