humanitarian forever

This is what we, born in Taiwan, have to encounter whenever and wherever we go internationally. We’ve got to stand up for ourselves and voice for ourselves. No one will support and respect us unless we do so.

Here is my experience and the correspondence is as follows.

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Dear ADPCA:

I am a member of this organization, from Taiwan, and was registering the membership online. When I filled in personal data, I found that "Taiwan, province of China" is probably the option I ought to select in the "country" column. However, I have to say that Taiwan herself is a country, not a province of some other country. Therefore, I would like to ask you to correct this serious mistake before I register. We as therapists present ourselves as an individual, with clear identity. I do not think state identity can be confused as such.

(signature)

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Dear (firstname),

Many thanks for contacting us and I am sorry for the way the website identifies Taiwan. This list is provided by Drupal, the software for the site and nobody had highlighted this matter before so I do apologise. I'll contact our technical support person to check if we can change the data of the list. Otherwise, we may delete the drop down list and let people to identify their countries themselves, which may be a more flexible and inclusive option. If you have other suggestions, please let me know.

Once again, thanks for your message. I am really sorry for our lack of attention and for any hurtful feelings that this may have caused. You will hear from us as soon as possible.

With respect and warm regards,

(signature)

ADPCA Website

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Dear (firstname),

Thank you for well taking my message. It's a tragedy that each individual Taiwanese citizen has to stand up and voice for himself or herself as if we have no government. But I still have to do my part.

Your response is probably the warmest of all since I have to highlight the issue wherever I go internationally; I really appreciate it. For me, as a person who clearly identifies who she is, I welcome all approaches to clear state identity. Besides deleting the drop down list, I discover that several websites whose software successfully help Taiwanese to identify themselves. Here are the websites for your reference:

(omit)

My guess is that they have different software than Drupal.

Thank you for showing that you care and I look forward to more updates.

Genuinely,

(signature)

written on July 9, 2012