Taiwan protests ‘discriminatory treatment’ at UN meet

By Mahmut Atanur

BEIJING (AA) – Taiwan has lodged a protest after experts from the island were excluded from a meeting of a United Nations body dealing with the fishing industry, with its foreign ministry attributing the move to “pressure from China”.

Taiwan -- considered a breakaway province by Beijing -- is not recognized by the UN and only has official diplomatic relations with 22 countries.

Taipei and Beijing also have conflicting claims to parts of the disputed South China Sea -- around 90 percent of which the mainland considers as its territory.

Taiwan’s official Central News Agency reported late Wednesday that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs instructed its relevant representative office to send a letter of "stern protest" to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization over a July meeting of the body’s Committee on Fisheries.

Describing Taiwan as “a major deep-sea fishing nation”, it objected to the organization's "discriminatory treatment" of experts from the island, who the ministry said were rejected from the meeting in Italy “due to pressure from China”.

Since Chinese nationalist leaders fled to Taiwan in 1949 after a brutal civil war with Mao Zedong's Communists, China has seen the region as a breakaway province that will eventually return.

In June, Beijing suspended a communication mechanism with Taipei after a traditionally pro-independence party took power in the island territory.

The Democratic Progressive Party, which secured its first majority in Taiwan’s parliament in a January election, has been known to object to a 1992 Consensus and the "one China" principle it entails -- which Beijing insists on as the basis of cross-Taiwan Strait ties.