China returns ‘Taiwan for UN’ stamped mail to senders

CHINA, infuriated at Taiwan's repeated bids to join the United Nations, sends back all mail arriving from the self-ruled island stamped with a UN slogan postmark, a government official said in Beijing yesterday. 

China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan, recognised by just a handful of countries across the world, since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 and has blocked its successive bids to join the United Nations as a separate country. 

Taiwan has been stamping letters and parcels headed overseas with the “Taiwan's entry into the United Nations” postmark to press its UN bid.  

The slogan also appears on public posters and on some shop receipts, sometimes along with a picture of President Chen Shui-bian. 

“The Taiwan authority preaching 'Taiwan independence' through post services has infringed on Taiwan compatriots' freedom of communication,” mainland spokesman Fan Liqing told a news conference yesterday.  

“This has seriously impaired the exchanges of letters between people on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait as well as Taiwan people's exchanges with other parts of the world.” 

The Nationalist Party, Taiwan's main opposition party which ruled all of China before the 1949 Com-munist revolution, has criticised the postmark as an electioneering tactic by Chen's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ahead of presidential polls in March. – Reuters