Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Experience ties Taiwan, Baltic states together

Hsu Meng-wei 許孟瑋

The Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — in 1940 were invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Joseph Stalin and the auspices of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a nonaggression treaty between Germany and the Soviets signed in 1939.

Conducting illegal surveillance, detention and execution, the Soviet Union carried out the June Deportation of 1941, in which 95,000 people were exiled to Siberian labor camps for “re-education.”

The victims included civil servants, military personnel, police officers, teachers, wealthy businesspeople, elderly people, women and children. Most of these “class enemies” never lived to see their homeland again.

China irate over Kyiv pro-Taiwan group

Taipei Times

Ukrainian lawmakers attend a session of parliament in Kyiv on Feb. 23.
Photo: Reuters

The Chinese embassy in Ukraine attempted to thwart the Ukrainian parliament’s plan to establish a pro-Taiwan group, Newsweek magazine reported on Saturday.

Ukraine’s parliament on Aug. 17 launched the Taiwan Friendship Group, which is led by Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Oleksandr Merezhko and consists of 15 lawmakers, two-thirds of whom belong to the ruling party.

US Navy transits Taiwan Strait

Taipei Times

The Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville transits the East China Sea in the Taiwan Strait during routine operations yesterday.
Photo: AFP / Justin Stack / US NAVY

Two US warships yesterday sailed through the Taiwan Strait, the US Navy said, the first such transit since China staged unprecedented military drills around Taiwan, which the Ministry of National Defense said are still ongoing.

In a statement, the US Navy said the transit “demonstrates the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

Hsia’s feeble objections to China

Lin Han 林志翰

Even as China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was conducting live-fire drills and a simulated blockade in the waters around Taiwan, and despite concerns that his plans would seriously damage the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) prospects in the November local elections, KMT Vice Chairman Andrew Hsia (夏立言) insisted on leading a party delegation to China.

Unable to prevent the trip, KMT politicians were only able to call for the itinerary of the visit to be public and transparent, and urge Hsia to express Taiwanese’s dissatisfaction with the PLA’s exercises.

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