Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Illustration: Constance Chou

The catastrophic triple meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in March 2011 was “a warning to the world” about the hazards of nuclear power and contained lessons for the British government as it plans a new generation of nuclear power stations, the man with overall responsibility for the operation in Japan has told the Guardian.

Speaking at his Tokyo corporate headquarters, Naomi Hirose, president of the Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), which runs the stricken Fukushima plant, said Britain’s nuclear managers “should be prepared for the worst” in order to avoid repeating Japan’s traumatic experience.

The controversial cross-strait service trade agreement has yet to clear the legislature, but it already appears to be having a chilling effect on the publishing and retail industry, generating self-censorship that is detrimental to Taiwanese democracy.

Earlier this week, Eslite Bookstore, one of the nation’s biggest and most popular bookstore chains, allegedly refused to put the book Death of a Buddha — The Truth behind the Death of the 10th Panchen Lama (殺佛–十世班禪大師蒙難真相) on its shelves. Co-written by exiled Chinese writer Yuan Hongbing (袁紅冰) and Tibetan author Namloyak Dhungser, the book details findings from the authors’ private interviews with Chinese and Tibetan officials that the 10th Panchen Lama, Choekyi Gyaltsen, was killed by poison in January 1989, rather than dying of a heart attack as the Chinese Communist Party claims.