During a meeting with the deputy speaker of Taiwan’s legislature on Wednesday morning, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reiterated the United States’ support for the self-governing island — and underlined her own long record of standing with pro-democracy and human rights groups.
“When you say that I’m a good friend of Taiwan, I take that as a great compliment,” she told deputy speaker Tsai Chi-chang, after he thanked her for the visit.
Pelosi expressed “very strong bipartisan” support for Taiwan, and said the purpose of her trip was to “increase interparliamentary cooperation and dialogue.”
“We commend Taiwan for being one of the freest societies in the world, for your success in addressing (the Covid-19 pandemic), which is a health issue, a security issue, an economic issue, and a governance issue,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi is a longtime critic of Beijing: In her remarks, Pelosi also referred to her longstanding support for human rights, and to a previous trip she took to Asia in 1991, when she unfurled a small banner in Beijing that read: “To those who died for democracy in China.”
That came just two years after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when a bloody military crackdown killed hundreds, if not thousands, of unarmed pro-democracy protesters in Beijing.
“Just to go back to Tiananmen Square for a minute. That was bipartisan. It was over 30 years ago,” Pelosi said on Wednesday. “We were there specifically making the statement on human rights.”