Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) officials yesterday admitted the forced withdrawal of a Taiwanese delegation from a regional security forum in Indonesia this week was the result of China’s intervention.
Taiwan had been invited by the Indonesian government to attend the third Jakarta International Defense Dialogue (JIDD), held on Wednesday and Thursday, but the invitation was withdrawn at the last minute without explanation.
The British newspaper the Financial Times, which broke the story on Thursday, quoted Indonesian Major General Syaiful Anwar, one of the organizers of the event, as saying Indonesia discouraged Taiwan from attending the conference following a verbal protest from Beijing.
Delegation member Alexander Huang (黃介正), an assistant professor at Tamkang University’s Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies, said the ministry told him on Tuesday the trip had been canceled, but did not say why.
Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lin (林永樂) said the ministry thought “there was some truth” to the newspaper report because he also suspected that China was involved.
Lin said the ministry needed to communicate with the Indonesian government to understand the reason for the abrupt withdrawal of the invitation.
“It’s much to our regret that the delegation’s two academics were not able to attend the conference. They both have strong academic backgrounds and they are acquainted with security issues in the Asia-Pacific region,” Lin said.
The other academic was Ma Chen-kun (馬振坤), a professor at National Defense University’s Fu Hsing Kang College, who attended the conference last year as a Taiwanese delegate. He declined to comment on the issue yesterday.
The two other members of the delegation were staffers at the Taipei Economic and Trade Office in Jakarta.
The JIDD incident came on the heels of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) four-day trip to the Vatican, Taiwan’s only diplomatic ally in Europe, to attend Pope Francis’ inauguration Mass on Tuesday, sparking speculation that Beijing’s action was in response to Ma’s trip.
Lin said it was more likely that the incident was “an isolated case” than a reaction to Ma’s trip because China had responded relatively mildly to his visit, although it did call on the Vatican to cut its diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
A ministry source said one reason Taiwan may have been blocked from this year’s JIDD could be that the Chinese delegation was led by a high-ranking official, Qi Jianguo (戚建國), deputy chief of the General Staff, while last year it was led by General Liu Yazhou (劉亞洲), a political commissioner at the People’s Liberation Army’s National Defense University.
CIVILIAN SIGHTING: Fishers from Penghu County took a photograph of a Chinese guided-missile destroyer near the median line of the Taiwan Strait China sent 77 military aircraft around Taiwan over a two-day period ending yesterday morning, an uptick in its activity over the past few weeks. Forty-one Chinese military aircraft were detected in the vicinity of Taiwan in the 24-hour period that ended at 6am yesterday, with 23 crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait and nine crossing its extension, entering the country’s northern, southwestern and eastern air defense identification zones (ADIZs), flight routes released yesterday by the Ministry of National Defense showed. Of the nine aircraft that crossed the median line’s extension, were seven fighter jets and two drones that flew around
UNDER THE RADAR: Two US deputy assistant state secretaries visited Taiwan and met with foreign diplomats to discuss how to boost the nation’s international participation US officials who visited Taiwan earlier this week met with foreign representatives and told them that UN Resolution 2758 does not involve Taiwan nor should it be conflated with China’s “one China” principle, sources said yesterday. UN Resolution 2758 recognized the People’s Republic of China as the sole legitimate government of China in 1971. Beijing has been misrepresenting it to exclude Taiwan from the international organization and its affiliates. A representative to Taiwan, requesting anonymity, quoted the US officials as saying during a meeting that as long as it is not specified in UN Resolution 2758, “everything is feasible” with regard to
ESCALATING TENSIONS: The US called for restraint and meaningful dialogue after Beijing threatened Taiwanese independence advocates with the death sentence The US on Monday condemned China’s “escalatory and destabilizing language and actions” toward Taiwan after Beijing last week announced new guidelines to punish supporters of Taiwanese independence. Asked about the guidelines, which included the death sentence for “diehard” independence advocates, US Department of State spokesman Matthew Miller said: “We strongly condemn the escalatory and destabilizing language and actions from PRC [People’s Republic of China] officials.” “We continue to urge restraint and no unilateral change to the status quo,” he said at the press briefing. The US urges China to “engage in meaningful dialogue with Taiwan,” Miller said, adding that “threats and legal
‘SEPARATIST’ CRACKDOWN: Beijing’s actions would only sow discord on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and damage exchanges, the Mainland Affairs Council said China has no jurisdiction over Taiwan, and its so-called laws and norms have no binding force on Taiwanese, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday as it called on Taiwanese “not to be threatened and intimidated” by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The council issued the remarks after China earlier in the day threatened to impose the death penalty in extreme cases of what it called “diehard Taiwanese independence separatists.” China’s state-run Xinhua news agency yesterday said the Chinese government unveiled guidelines that say its courts, prosecutors, public and state security bodies should “severely punish Taiwanese independence diehards for splitting the country