Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
United Nations Organization
New York, NY 10017
Fax: (212) 963.2155
Dear Mr. Secretary-General:
We write to spotlight an on-going embarrassment to the principles on which the United Nations Organization was established, specifically its refusal to grant U.N. access to journalists carrying Taiwanese passports or working for Taiwanese media.
We are well aware that, as a matter of policy, the United Nations refuses to accredit journalists from states unrecognized by the General Assembly. This is in glaring contradiction to Article 19 of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which explicitly grants “everyone” the right to “seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Article 19 says nothing about restricting that right to U.N. member nations. On the contrary, Article 2 of the declaration says plainly that “no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.”
As you surely know, since 1994, the UN’s Department of Public Information has barred Taiwanese journalists from directly covering the work of the United Nations. This second-hand coverage denies twenty three million Taiwanese the right to know of the essential work of the U.N. And it makes absurd the idea of “public information.”
Taiwanese journalists are prohibited from directly covering the activities of the World Health Organization in New York, Geneva or anywhere else. We would point out, for example, that in the SARS outbreak of five years ago, Taiwanese health officials — and by extension the Taiwanese public — were denied access to World Health Organization resources in tracking and defending against the disease. And yet, Taiwan’s geographical positioning makes it a doorway to eastern Asia. Who benefits from such a policy, Your Excellency?
We are far from the first to point out the illogic of this situation and its affront to the values on which the U.N. operates. The United Nations Correspondents Association has been making the same argument for more than ten years. It brings discredit to the U.N., Your Excellency, to learn from our colleagues that for so many years, the response of the Department of Public Information has been silence — a strong indication that the Office knows there is no case to be made for excluding Taiwan from the army of reporters who cover the United Nations every day.
We fully understand that the roots of Taiwan’s exclusion from the work of the United Nations lie in its tense relationship with the People’s Republic of China. We take no position on that. But we have a considered position on press freedom, and have always looked to the U.N. to uphold it.
So long as our Taiwanese colleagues continue to be barred from doing their legitimate and necessary work, the credibility of the United Nations will be seriously in question on a primary human right — the right to “impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
Very truly yours,
Larry Martz Kevin McDermott Norman A. Schorr
cc:
Ambassador Wang Guangya
Permanent Representative
Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations
350 East 35th Street
New York, NY 10016
Fax: (212) 634.7626
Ms. Abby Lee
Taipei Economic and Cultural Office
Press Division
1 East 42nd Street
New York, NY 10017
Fax: (212) 557.3043/ 44
U.N. Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit
Fax: (212) 963.4642
J. Tuyet Nguyen
United Nations Correspondents Association
Mailbox 613
Chrysler Building
132 East 43rd Street
New York, NY 10017
natuyet@aol.com