The Burmese military’s violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters is unacceptable to the democratic world, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
The ministry in a statement said that the Burmese military’s use of lethal force against rallying crowds in Myanmar over the past few days has shocked the international community.
“Such actions are regrettable and are not acceptable to governments and people of democratic countries,” the ministry said.
Photo: AP
According to media reports, soldiers and police in Myanmar on Saturday fired on protesters who were demanding an end to military rule in the country, leaving at least two people dead and 20 injured.
As of press time last night, no Taiwanese in Myanmar have been reported harmed during the turmoil, the ministry said, citing information provided by Taiwan’s representative office there.
The ministry advised Taiwanese in Myanmar to stay alert and said that those in distress can contact Taiwan’s representative office at +95-9-257-257-575 for assistance.
Meanwhile, a China Airlines flight carrying 82 people, including 52 Taiwanese, from Myanmar arrived in Taipei yesterday afternoon.
The flight, the first of three that the airline arranged for Taiwanese in Myanmar who wished to return home, took off from the capital, Naypyidaw, at about 11am.
The Council of Agriculture yesterday signed a Taiwan-Australia Agricultural Cooperation Implementation clause to open a new export market for the nation’s pineapple crop. The clause is an addition to existing cooperation measures, it said. China on Friday last week abruptly announced that it would suspend pineapple imports from Taiwan starting on Monday, on grounds that it had on multiple occasions discovered “harmful organisms” in shipments of the fruit. The public and private sectors have since joined hands to purchase the local fruit to help the nation’s pineapple farmers. Canberra has requested that all pineapples for export to Australia have their crown buds removed,
POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS: As China attempted to promote its national image through humanitarian aid, its targets include New Southbound Policy countries, an expert said China’s “vaccine diplomacy,” which has become central to its foreign policy this year, might hamper Taiwan’s efforts to build relations with developing countries, an expert said. “China, as one of the few countries other than the United Kingdom and the United States to have produced a COVID-19 vaccine, will certainly use that as a diplomatic tool,” said Kung Shan-son (龔祥生), an assistant research fellow at the government-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research. Beijing’s major goals in its “vaccine diplomacy” are to promote its national image through humanitarian aid and to solidify its relations with countries that are included in its
A Tainan taxi driver is the Taiwanese with the longest name, after he last month changed it so that it now contains 25 characters, the Anping District Household Registration Office said. The 47-year-old man, formerly known as Huang Hsin-hsiang (黃鑫翔), applied for the name change on Feb. 26, in the hope that it would bring him good luck. His new name starts with Huang Da-lan (黃大嵐) and adds another 22 characters, meaning “Huang Da-lan is the blessed darling and sweetheart of the god of joy, god of wealth, god of misfortune, god of Earth and all the gods,” it said. With
Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group might have lost its right to distribute the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for COVID-19 and the ability to fulfill a contract in Taiwan, civic groups Taiwan Citizen Front and the Economic Democracy Union said yesterday. In a radio interview on Feb. 17, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), head of the Central Epidemic Command Center, said that last year, Taiwan was close to signing a contract to buy doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but that the deal was halted at the last moment, with some speculating that Chinese interference was to blame. On Monday last week, the center