Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

WHO memo sparks outrage in Taiwan

Taipei Times

Senior WHO officials sent out an internal memo on Sept. 14 last year asking WHO agencies to be kept aware that Taiwan is a “Province of China,” pursuant to an arrangement with Beijing.

The confidential memo, released by a lawmaker yesterday and published by the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) the same day, says that procedures used by the WHO to facilitate relations with Taiwan and how these relations operate were subject to Chinese — and not Taiwanese — approval.

The authenticity of the document has been confirmed with the WHO, which is based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Ma Continues the KMT Belittling of Taiwan's Aborigines

Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

Ma Ying-jeou continued to express his Han chauvinistic prejudice in recent remarks to the aboriginal community. It was bad enough to hear his past telling the aborigines that they need to move into the city where they will receive a proper education on being civilized. Somehow he had implied that living in nature and on one's ancestral lands automatically made one uncivilized and a barbarian. But this time Ma went beyond just speaking on locale determining brains. This time he may have thought he was complimenting them, but that is Ma logic and Han chauvinism.

Embedded advertising threatens democracy

Lu I-ming 呂一銘

According to US-based Freedom House’s report this year on freedom of the press, Taiwan scored its lowest ranking since 2002, continuing a slide that began in 2008. Taiwan dropped 16 places in the global ranking and went from being the freest media in Asia to second place.

The report cited problems such as the debate over the chairpersonship of the Taiwan Public Television Service (PTS), government-funded embedded advertising, increasing frequency of flattering reports about the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and likewise with negative reports about the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). These remarks were very similar to what the US Department of State said in its Human Rights Report last year and they all have an impact on the image of Taiwanese democracy and freedom.

Aborigines slam Ma’s remarks on total autonomy

Taipei Times

Several Aboriginal activists yesterday condemned remarks President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) made on Wednesday, when he said that complete autonomy for Aborigines would only bring isolation, and that Aborigines should be valued for their talent in sports and music.

“We Aborigines cannot agree at all with the discriminatory remarks that Ma made against the country’s Aborigines during a Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] Central Standing Committee meeting on Wednesday,” Indigenous Peoples’ Action Coalition of Taiwan (IPACT) convener Omi Wilang told a news conference in Taipei. “We strongly condemn the remarks. He should apologize for them.”

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