Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Yunlin farmer’s suicide attempt brings attention to equipment delivery delays

Taipei Times

A farmer in Chiayi County yesterday takes advantage of the good weather to take in the harvest.
Photo: Lin Yi-chang, Taipei Times

The plight of a 69-year-old farmer who attempted to commit suicide after being unable to salvage his crops in time to avoid further damage caused by the recent rains has attracted officials’ attention to the delayed delivery of mechanical reapers to farmers.

The Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday reported that the farmer from Dounan Township (斗南) in Yunlin County, surnamed Lin (林), drank pesticide in a fit of despair the night after he had waited in vain for mechanical reapers that never arrived.

Taiwan, China need a ‘special friendship’

Nat Bellocchi 白樂崎

Harvard professor emeritus Ezra Vogel recently visited Taiwan for the release of the Hanji edition of his new book on former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平). During his visit, Vogel said Taiwan’s democracy was inspiring for China and could serve as a model for China’s democratic development.

While I fervently hope that China will become a democratic country, I cannot agree that the Taiwanese experience can serve as a model. First, Taiwan’s transition to democracy was very much due to the unique situation in Taiwan during the 1980s. The majority of Taiwanese had been disenfranchised during four decades of martial law under the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration and rose up to claim their right to a representative government. It is therefore very much a democracy with a Taiwanese character.

Government pushed on Tibetan rights

Taipei Times

Taiwanese and Tibetan activists are urging Taiwan’s government to show greater concern over poor human rights conditions in China, and especially Tibet, that have led Tibetans to set themselves on fire in protest.

Chow Mei-li (周美里), chairwoman of the Taiwan Friends of Tibet, said she believes Taiwan’s government has the ability and is obliged to influence China on the issue as the two sides “have many channels of communication open.” With leaders in Taiwan and China able to communicate frequently, it is Taiwan’s responsibility to urge Beijing to respect the human rights and religious freedoms of Tibetans, she said.

Now is time to go nuclear-free: author

Taipei Times

Tokyo-based Taiwanese writer Liu Li-erh (劉黎兒) yesterday in Taipei shared her latest fact-finding from Japan to say that now is the best time to put a halt to nuclear power in Taiwan.

Having lived in Tokyo for 30 years and experienced the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11 last year and led to the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, Liu said that more than 1 million Japanese continue to live in areas with high daily radiation exposure and the total cost of damage from the nuclear disaster is still too high to estimate.

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