The World Health Organization (WHO) is suspected of blocking messages on its Facebook Live page supporting Taiwan’s participation in the WHO on November 12. According to a Nov. 13 report by Deutsche Welle, any message containing the words “Taiwan can help” or “Taiwan” can’t be sent to the World Health Organization’s Facebook Live page. The message will be sent with a red exclamation mark next to it. Also, messages containing the word “Taiwan” in both simplified and traditional Chinese characters cannot be sent.
The World Health Assembly (WHA) resumes on November 9. Under pressure from China, Taiwan is still unable to participate in the meeting. Taiwan’s Sanli Press reported that Taiwan’s friendly nations continued to speak in support of Taiwan’s statement at the meeting, but were directly “jammed out of the picture” several times by the chairman of the committee. Due to this year’s global pandemic of new coronavirus pneumonia, the WHO meeting was moved to be held online from November 9-14.
In addition to not being able to send messages related to Taiwan in English and Chinese, WHO’s Facebook page will also display “spam” messages containing the words “China, Wuhan and Xi Jinping”.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been criticized for its lack of self-confidence, as evidenced by the fact that it cannot even appear as a “Taiwan”, Taiwan’s “Epoch Times” reports. The Chinese government’s decision to use the government’s power in the country’s economy was made in a joint interview with the media before the government went to the Legislative Yuan on Nov. 13 to present its policy address and was questioned about it. The government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) said that it has been “very pleased with the results of the campaign,” and that it has been “very pleased with the results of the campaign.
Before, Taiwan’s representative to the U.S. Hsiao Mei-chin on November 12 in a tweet that if the WHO does block “Taiwan” in the Facebook fan page related to the message, “this represents the success of the Facebook and WHO joint shield Taiwan against the neo-crown epidemic”. The first time I was in a position to do so was when I was in the middle of a conversation with my wife. Xiao Meiqin said “WHO adopts Chinese Communist-style censorship, which is worrying!” She tweeted today that she hoped WHO would understand that the blocking of Facebook messages with the word “Taiwan” in them is a great loss to the organization, especially at a time when the whole world needs to work together to fight the epidemic.
Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Wu Zhao-sheep said on the same day that he was dissatisfied and regretted what the WHO secretariat had done. He said a protest had been lodged.
The WHO responded on November 12 that its Facebook page was flooded with a large number of messages, and it was suspected that it might be under cyber attack, so community managers set keywords such as “Taiwan” to filter the messages. The WHO Facebook page has now been reopened for comments with related keywords, according to Taiwan’s CGTN.
According to Deutsche Welle, Facebook told Deutsche Welle that they are not directly involved in the management of the WHO Facebook Live, which includes the ability to block certain keywords or disable comments. Facebook’s fan page blocking features are available to fan page administrators around the world, who can use the features as they see fit.
An unnamed academic quoted by Deutsche Welle said that the WHO’s blocking of messages in English and Chinese containing the word “Taiwan” is clearly a deliberate attempt by the organization to block messages related to Taiwan, and clearly constitutes content censorship. He told Deutsche Welle: “The WHO has the power to control the settings of the fan page, so this is clearly a censorship mechanism set up by the WHO itself.”
Recent Comments