Aren’t Norwegians the good guys?
Yet, somehow, this bastion of human rights (and “best democracy in the world”) has, since 2010, “forcibly registered the nationality of Taiwanese residing in Norway as ‘Chinese’”?
“The action is considered an act of appeasement,” The News Lens paraphrases Joseph Liu, a Taiwanese lawyer based in Norway, “after the Norwegian Nobel Committee angered Beijing by awarding the peace prize to the late human rights activist Liu Xiaobo the same year.”
Norway’s promotion of human rights upset the genocidal Chinese government, which had imprisoned Liu Xiaobo, and which then moved to “suspend trade talks with Norway and restrict exports of important commodities.” It took six years of placating the Chinazis before normal diplomatic and economic relations were restored.
Meanwhile, Taiwanese students living in The Land of the Midnight Sun are demanding their right simply to be Taiwanese. Joseph Liu formed a group, “Taiwan: My Name, My Right,” to lobby Norway’s government and is now legally challenging the policy. After Norway’s supreme court rejected their lawsuit last year, they have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights.
“The Applicants are Taiwanese,” argues Professor Jill Marshall of the University of London, “failing to state this on their official documentation and instead ascribing them with an incorrect nationality misidentifies them and violates their right to personal identity.”
Even as Norway denies Taiwanese identity, its own identity takes the biggest hit. Prime Minister Erna Solberg explained her 2014 snubbing of the Dalai Lama as “a necessary sacrifice in order to show China that it’s important for us to have a dialogue with them.”
Sacrificing what’s right and just for trade deals with totalitarians is no way to be Norway.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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5 replies on “Not Being Norway”
The island name is Taiwan (or Formosa), but isn’t the nation known officially as the Republic of China?
You are correct. Of course, if the Taiwanese were to change the country’s official name, it might trigger a Chinese invasion. So that fly seems always in the ointment.
Wow. The Vikings turned out to be kinda squishy, right?
My understanding is that the Taiwanese regime considers Taiwan part of China, and itself the “legitimate” government of same (that is, the “one China” policy, but with the Taipei regime rather than the Beijing regime being the “legitimate” rulers).
So how is calling someone from an area that purports to be China “Chinese” doing anything “forcible?”
People from the Republic of China call themselves Taiwanese. The passport says Taiwan on it. It is forced because the Norwegian government compels it on forms or one would be forcibly removed.
Democratically-elected Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has made it abundantly clear that Taiwan, or the ROC if YOU prefer, is an independent country. Taiwan has made no threat against any neighbor yet if they speak too clearly on their own independence they are threatened with annihilation by a nuclear power.
I’m rooting and working and hoping for the 24 million people living freely today in Taiwan to be able to continue to do so. And keeping making great computer chips. And bubble tea.