The Kingdom of Eswatini and Russia have named their top envoys to Taiwan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
Eswatini Prime Minister Cleopas Dlamini on Friday announced that Promise Sithembiso Msibi, then-ambassador to the African Union, is to replace Thamie Dlamini as the nation’s ambassador to Taiwan, said Yang Syin-yi (楊心怡), director of the ministry’s Department of West Asian and African Affairs.
Thamie Dlamini has been appointed Eswatini’s representative to the UN, Yang added.
Photo: Eswatini Government’S Twitter account
Msibi, 57, had visited Taiwan twice, as a parliamentary secretary in 2004, and to accompany King Mswati III’s mother to attend Taiwan’s Double Ten National Day celebrations in 2011, Yang said.
Msibi is highly trusted by King Mswati III, making him a good choice as Eswatini’s ambassador to Taiwan, he said, adding that the African kingdom has not yet announced when he is to arrive in Taiwan.
Yury Metelev, Russia’s new top envoy, arrived in Taiwan on Oct. 12 to take up his post as representative of the Moscow-Taipei Coordination Commission on Economic and Cultural Cooperation, Yang said.
Photo: Lu Yi-hsuan, Taipei Times
Metelev, 60, had served as the deputy head of the Russian Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad and International Humanitarian Cooperation.
He speaks fluent Chinese, English and Slovak, Yang said.
In related news, former vice president Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) is to attend a democracy forum this week in Lithuania, and deliver a speech on Taiwan’s democracy and achievements in the latest sign of growing ties between Taipei and Vilnius, the ministry said in a statement on Monday.
Chen is to appear at the “Future of Democracy” forum in Vilnius, which is being held on Friday and Saturday, at the invitation of Lithuanian Minister for Foreign Affairs Gabrielius Landsbergis, it said.
The former vice president is also to talk about Taiwan’s COVID-19 prevention experience and its response to disinformation in his speech titled “Taiwan as a Litmus Case for Democracy,” it said.
The forum “is convened in response to the worrying trends of contracting democratic space and authoritarian entrenchment,” the Lithuanian foreign ministry’s Web site said.
Prior to his arrival in Lithuania, Chen is to stop in Poland to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial at the site of the biggest concentration camp run by Nazi Germany during World War II.
Chen, who was the nation’s vice president from 2016 to last year, is now an academician at Academia Sinica.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
SECURITY: The purpose for giving Hong Kong and Macau residents more lenient paths to permanent residency no longer applies due to China’s policies, a source said The government is considering removing an optional path to citizenship for residents from Hong Kong and Macau, and lengthening the terms for permanent residence eligibility, a source said yesterday. In a bid to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from infiltrating Taiwan through immigration from Hong Kong and Macau, the government could amend immigration laws for residents of the territories who currently receive preferential treatment, an official familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity said. The move was part of “national security-related legislative reform,” they added. Under the amendments, arrivals from the Chinese territories would have to reside in Taiwan for
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