Beijing pressures lawmakers from 6 countries not to attend conference in Taiwan

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Beijing pressures lawmakers from 6 countries not to attend conference in Taiwan

BEIJING (AP) — ******** diplomats are pressuring lawmakers from at least six countries not to attend a China-focused summit in Taiwan, participants told The Associated Press.

Politicians in Bolivia, Colombia, Slovakia, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and one other ****** country that declined to be named, say they are getting texts, calls and urgent requests for meetings that would conflict with their plans to travel to Taiwan, in what they describe as efforts to isolate the self-governed island.

The summit begins Monday and is being held by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China,

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concerned about how democracies approach Beijing. The Associated Press spoke to the organizers and three lawmakers, and reviewed texts and emails sent by ******** diplomats to the lawmakers asking whether they were planning to participate in the summit.

“I’m Wu, from ******** Embassy,” read a message sent to Antonio Miloshoski, a member of parliament in North Macedonia. “We heard that you got an invitation from IPAC, will you attend the Conference which will be held next week in Taiwan?”

In some cases, lawmakers described vague inquiries about their plans to travel to Taiwan. In other cases, the contact was more menacing: One lawmaker told AP that ******** diplomats messaged the head of her party with a demand to stop her from going.

“They sent a direct message to the President of my party, to stop me from traveling to Taiwan,” said Sanela Klarić, a member of parliament in Bosnia and Herzegovina. “He showed me the message from them. He said, ‘I will advise you not to go, but I cannot stop you, it’s something you have to make a decision.’”

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against politicians and countries that

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, which has only informal relations with most countries due to ******** diplomatic pressure. Klarić said the pressure was unpleasant but only steeled her determination to go on the trip.

“I really am fighting against countries or societies where the tool to manipulate and control peoples is *****,” said Klarić, adding that it reminded her of threats and intimidation she faced while suffering through the Balkans war in the 1990s. “I really hate the feeling when somebody is frightening you.”

China vehemently defends its claim to Taiwan, a self-governed island that Beijing views as its own territory to be annexed by force if necessary. Last week, Beijing criticized Taiwan for

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, saying that Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party was “carrying out provocations to seek independence.”

“Any attempt to whip up tensions and use force to seek independence or ******* reunification is doomed to ********,” ******** Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters.

The ******** Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which aims to coordinate diplomacy in response to perceived threats from Beijing, has long faced pressure from the ******** government. Some members have been sanctioned by Beijing, and in 2021 the group was targeted by ******** state-sponsored hackers, according to

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.

But Luke de Pulford, the alliance’s director, says the pressure from ******** officials the past few days has been unprecedented.

During past meetings in other locations, lawmakers were approached by ******** diplomats only after they concluded. This year, the pressure has sharply escalated and appears to be a coordinated attempt to stop participants from attending.

“This is ****** foreign interference. This is not normal diplomacy,” de Pulford said. “How would PRC officials would feel if we tried to tell them about their travel plans, where they could and could not go? It’s absolutely outrageous that they think that they can interfere in the travel plans of foreign legislators,” he added, using the acronym for China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.

Lawmakers from 25 countries are expected to attend this year’s summit and will feature high-level meetings with Taiwanese officials, according to a press release. The Taiwanese Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China has been peeling off the island’s diplomatic allies, often with promises of development aid, in a long-running competition between the two that has swung in Beijing’s favor in recent years. The Pacific Island nation of Nauru

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, a move that reduced Taiwan’s dwindling number of diplomatic allies to 12.

But China’s at-times heavy-handed approach has also triggered backlash.

In 2021,

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, a member of both the EU and NATO, after the Baltic nation broke with diplomatic custom by agreeing that a Taiwanese representative office in its capital of Vilnius would bear the name Taiwan instead of ******** Taipei, which other countries use to avoid offending Beijing. The following year, the EU adopted a resolution criticizing Beijing’s behavior toward Taiwan and

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Most of the lawmakers targeted appear to be from smaller countries, which de Pulford said was likely because Beijing “feels that they can get away with it.” But he added that the coercive tactics has only made participants more determined to participate.

Miriam Lexmann, a Slovakian member of the ********* Parliament whose party head was approached by ******** diplomats, said the pressure underscored her reason for coming to Taiwan.

We want to “exchange information, ways how to deal with those challenges and threats which China represents to the democratic part of the world, and of course, to support Taiwan,” she said.

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Associated Press video journalist Johnson Lai contributed to this report from Taipei, Taiwan.

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#Beijing #pressures #lawmakers #countries #attend #conference #Taiwan

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