Taiwan's Sweden Envoy Urges Support for International Participation Ahead of UNGA

The 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly has recently opened grandly in New York, USA, sparking intense diplomatic battles among nations worldwide. At this critical juncture, Taiwan’s Representative to Sweden, Yeh Fei-pi, published an op-ed in Expressen, a major Swedish mainstream newspaper, publicly calling on all sectors in Sweden to face and support Taiwan. Yeh pointed out in the article that China has long maliciously distorted United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 in an attempt to suppress Taiwan's legitimate right to participate in international organizations. She emphasized that in the face of China's continuous suppression and diplomatic isolation, Taiwan urgently needs like-minded democratic partners such as Sweden to lend a helping hand in its pursuit of international participation, thereby jointly defending the rules-based international order.

The core appeal of this op-ed is to urge Sweden's new government to build upon the existing solid foundation and continue to firmly support Taiwan's participation in the United Nations General Assembly and its various specialized agencies. Yeh pointed out that as an indispensable key hub in the global supply chain and an important democratic bastion for the democratic camp on the front line against authoritarianism, Taiwan is fully capable and willing to make substantial contributions to UN specialized agencies such as the World Health Organization and the International Civil Aviation Organization. However, for a long time, China has conflated UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 with the so-called "one-China principle," thereby depriving Taiwan's 23 million people of their right to participate in international affairs. This not only seriously violates the principle of universality proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations, but also creates irreparable loopholes in global public health and aviation safety.

Reviewing the historical context, UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 was passed in 1971. Its main content was to restore all rights of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations and recognize its government's representatives as the only legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations. However, the resolution does not mention "Taiwan" anywhere, nor does it authorize the People's Republic of China to represent the people of Taiwan within the UN system. Nevertheless, in recent years, the Beijing authorities have used legal warfare and public opinion warfare to widely propagate the so-called narrative of Taiwan's status being settled in the international community, attempting to weaponize the resolution and comprehensively block Taiwan's space for participating in all international organizations. In recent years, Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and overseas missions have continuously and strongly counterattacked this fallacy, clarifying to the international community the legal truth that the UN resolution does not involve Taiwan's sovereignty, while actively striving for public opinion support and parliamentary backing from like-minded countries.

As an important Nordic democracy, Sweden has shown a high degree of concern for security and geopolitical situations in the Indo-Pacific region in recent years, especially at the parliamentary and civil society levels, where pro-Taiwan forces are growing. Cross-party lawmakers in Sweden have publicly called on the executive branch multiple times in the past to strengthen substantive bilateral relations with Taiwan and to speak up for Taiwan in international venues such as the World Health Assembly. Yeh's decision to publish this op-ed in Sweden's mainstream newspaper Expressen precisely leveraged Swedish society's high consensus on press freedom, human rights values, and democratic defense. Through public discourse, it can not only directly convey Taiwan's voice to the Swedish public, but also exert public pressure on Sweden's new government, enabling it to more concretely include Taiwan in the cooperation network of Indo-Pacific democratic partners when formulating its policies toward China and Taiwan.

Looking to the future, Taiwan's path to striving for survival space in the international community remains perilous, but through the vigorous op-eds and active diplomacy of overseas envoys, Taiwan's demands have successfully broken into the pages of international mainstream media. Yeh's appeal not only represents the aspirations of the Taiwanese government and people, but also highlights the legitimacy and urgency of Taiwan's participation in the international system. Facing China's escalating suppression, Taiwan will continue to unite the strength of like-minded countries around the world to jointly resist the expansion of authoritarianism and prove to the world that Taiwan is an indispensable force for good in maintaining regional peace and global prosperity. Whether Sweden's new government will subsequently give Taiwan more concrete and substantive diplomatic support on UN-related issues will also become an important indicator for observing diplomatic trends in Northern Europe.

(Source of facts: Central News Agency)