Taiwan would never treat allied nations the way China does, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday after photographs showing Chinese Ambassador to Kiribati Tang Songgen (唐松根) walking over the backs of local children welcoming him to Marakei Island sparked worldwide criticism.
The pictures showed about 30 people lying on the ground as part of a ceremony this month to welcome the Chinese ambassador.
Kiribati switched recognition from Beijing to Taipei in 2003, but it switched back to Beijing in September last year.
Photo taken from the Twitter account of journalist Michael Field
The unusual diplomatic welcome has sparked criticism from Western politicians, with observers saying that the image is a manifestation of the rising influence of China’s colonialism in the Pacific region and an irony when juxtaposed with Kirabati’s national anthem, Teirake Kaini Kiribati, which means “Stand up Kiribati.”
“I simply cannot imagine any scenario in which walking on the backs of children is acceptable behavior by an ambassador of any country (or any adult for that matter!)” Constantine Panayiotou, the US defense attache to five Pacific island nations, including Kiribati, wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
“I’d be very surprised if an Australian representative participated in such a ceremony of this nature,” said Australian parliamentarian Dave Sharma, a former diplomat to Australia’s mission in Papua New Guinea.
Kiribati netizens and experts said that the practice is part of a traditional welcome ceremony and urged outsiders not to make subjective interpretations.
Speaking at a regular news briefing in Taipei yesterday, ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou (歐江安) said that the image is not the Kiribati that Taiwan knew and that Taiwanese diplomats have never seen a ceremony of that kind.
The ministry believes that “the world will make fair assessments” as to how China treats its new ally Kiribati, she said.
Meanwhile, Ou criticized the so-called “one Somalia” principle that was presented in a statement by the Somalian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, after Taiwan’s representative office in Somaliland, a self-declared state in east Africa, officially opened in Hargeisa on Monday.
“The Federal Government of Somalia condemns Taiwan’s reckless attempts to infringe on the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Somalia and violate its territorial integrity,” the statement said. “The Federal Government of Somalia repudiates such misguided endeavors that seek to sow discord and division among our people.”
It called on Taiwan to “cease its misinformed ventures into any part of the territory of the Federal Republic of Somalia.”
“These principles are non-negotiable,” it said.
Ou said it appeared that China coerced the government of Somalia to issue the statement.
The so-called “one Somalia” principle is as ridiculous as the so-called “one China” principle, she said.
Somalia and Somaliland are two separate nations and the latter has held three presidential elections since it became independent in 1991, she said.
The ties between Taiwan and Somaliland are based on the shared values of freedom and democracy, Ou said, adding that the Chinese and Somalian governments have no right to interfere with Taiwan’s interactions with other nations.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching