Trump was right to take a phone call from Taiwan

How dreadful that he spoke to the leader of a State that America severed diplomatic relations with 37 years ago. And China’s government is shocked to the core.

I think it is entirely fitting that the leaders of the Free World should be on good terms with the only part of China where free and democratic elections are held. President Tasi Ing-wen was chosen by the people of Taiwan. The cruel and deeply corrupt regime in Beijing has no democratic mandate.

It rules by terror and suppresses any hint of dissent. Millions are imprisoned for opposing the dictatorship, including members and supporters of religious groups who espouse peaceful alternatives to the present authoritarian system.

The dictatorship has succeeded in bullying many nations into keeping their distance from Taiwan, but not as hideously as it has bullied the people of Tibet, a country China invaded and annexed in 1950. Tibet’s national identify was destroyed, along with its mysterious ancient culture.

Monasteries were leveled to the ground, monks executed, and the country’s leaders forced into exile. Millions of its inhabitants were imprisoned, tortured, or murdered by the invaders as part of push to incorporate that ancient land into a Greater China.

Far from avoiding contact with Taiwan, I hope incoming US administration will rally to the aid of both that fragile democracy and occupied Tibet.

In June 1944, Europe experienced the beginning of liberation from despotism with the D Day landings in Normandy.

I look forward to Tibet’s D Day and to the inevitable trials of the Chinese regime’s leaders for Crimes against Humanity.

John Fitzgerald, Dublin