TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan’s economic ministry said export controls are not designed to address humanitarian concerns, as civil society groups protested Taiwan’s close ties with Israel at the Legislative Yuan on Monday (April 29).
Taiwan Alliance for a Free Palestine, which represents more than 50 Taiwanese civil society groups, met in the legislature to call on Taiwan’s government to end its support for Israel as it fights a war in Gaza that has so far killed over 34,000 Palestinians. The alliance issued demands to Taiwan’s economic and foreign ministries, and it called on legislators to withdraw from the Taiwan-Israel parliamentary alliance.
“The Taiwanese people and its government shall not remain silent, nor shall we go against this emerging wave of justice and choose to aid a massacre that will be condemned for generations to come, all for short-term gains,” the alliance said.
It also called on the foreign ministry to stop sending aid to Israel and to send humanitarian assistance to Palestine. It said the economic ministry should publicize any arms sales trade records between Taiwan and Israel, and end weapons development cooperation with Israeli arms dealers.
Taiwan Alliance for a Free Palestine has held protests in the past, though Monday’s was the first at the Legislative Yuan. The alliance is co-convened by groups including Taiwan Association for Human Rights, Taiwan International Workers Association, and Amnesty International.
Group spokesperson Yang Kang (楊剛) told Taiwan News that it was important to hold the press conference at the legislative body to address lawmakers and government institutions directly.
Yang said that members of the Taiwan-Israel parliamentary alliance were invited to the event, though none were present. He said the Taiwan government was “very easily” able to stop companies exporting materials used in weapons manufacturing to Russia following the war in Ukraine, and the same could be done for Israel.
Taiwan’s foreign ministry declined to respond to questions about the group's demands, while the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) told Taiwan News that economic sanctions would only be applied if they were first handed down by the United Nations Security Council. MOEA also said that its export control measures are not designed to address humanitarian concerns, and that trade records are publicly available on its website.
The alliance listed several Taiwanese technology companies that they believe are cooperating with Israeli arms manufacturers whose products are used by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza. One of the companies the alliance listed is Taichung’s Thunder Tiger Corporation (雷虎科技股份有限公司), which began using cameras from Israeli company NextVision in the production of drones in May 2023.
NextVision’s co-founder and chair Chen Golan said in an interview in March that the company's products are used by the IDF, and that the increase in military conflicts worldwide had helped sales. NextVision’s profits have reportedly doubled since the war in Gaza.
A spokesperson for Thunder Tiger Corporation told Taiwan News on Monday that the company is not authorized by Taiwan’s defense ministry to produce military equipment, and said it does not produce any weapons or parts for the IDF. The company had not sold drones directly to Israel, though it could not prevent its clients from modifying them for military use, they said.
The spokesperson said the company was continuing to import cameras from NextVision, and that the Israeli company manufactures some “key componentry” for its cameras in Taiwan. They said they were not aware of which company did this, and NextVision did not immediately respond to Taiwan News' inquiries on this matter.
Taiwan Alliance for a Free Palestine issued demands as protests rage across U.S. college campuses, with students and faculty calling on their universities to divest from companies that do business with Israel and for a ceasefire in Gaza. Campus protests have also occurred in Canada and Australia in the past week.
Kuo Hsing-chein (郭行健) of one of the alliance’s co-organizing groups, Parallel Government (平行政府), spoke at the Legislative Yuan meeting. He said in addition to the campus protests, hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets to protest the war in Gaza throughout Europe and other parts of the world traditionally aligned with Israel.
“We call on Taiwan’s leaders to think carefully about the true meaning of ‘standing with the international community’,” Kuo said. “We should stand together with those who are suffering around the world and look forward to a day our government can truly uphold the values of human rights."
The war in Gaza was launched after Palestinian group Hamas killed over 1,100 people in Israel in a surprise attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel’s response has devastated the Palestinian territory with bombing that has killed thousands of civilians, and by restricting the entry of food and medicine into the territory.
On April 27, Palestinian authorities said that the death toll since Oct. 7 had reached 34,388, and that the majority of those dead are women and children. Israel has argued that the numbers, reported by Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry, were exaggerated.
However, “the numbers are likely conservative,” Les Roberts, epidemiologist and professor emeritus at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, wrote in Time Magazine in March. “The science is extremely clear," he said, after assessing evidence that concluded the Gazan numbers were credible.
United Nations agencies have also reported evidence that Palestinian civilians were possibly tortured by the IDF, after hundreds of bodies were found in mass graves outside two now destroyed hospitals. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has called for an investigation into the deaths.
